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* 











*" THE WORKS OF 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
AVALON EDITION 
VOLUME XII 
* 8 ? 

INDOOR ESSAYS 

v/ 


II 





















































* 













































STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 

D. C. L. (Oxon.) 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1921 


Copyright, 1889 , 1891 , 1892 , 1897 , 1898 , 1920 , 1921 , 
by Charles Scribner s Sons { 



w 






©CLA6U973 


STo 

A YOUNG WOMAN 
OF AN OLD FASHION 

WHO LOVES ART 
NOT ONLY FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
BUT BECAUSE IT ENNOBLES LIFE 
WHO READS POETRY 
NOT TO KILL TIME 

BUT TO FILL IT WITH BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
• AND WHO STILL BELIEVES 

IN GOD AND DUTY AND IMMORTAL LOVE 
I DEDICATE 


THIS BOOK 


PREFACE 


In this volume I have brought together the 
results of some fifty years’ reading and study 
of Tennyson, with such revision and rearrange- 
ment as seemed desirable. 

The way in which the book has come into 
its present shape is somewhat curious. The 
first chapter was written, practically as it now 
stands, as an introduction to the select Poems 
of Tennyson in the Athenaeum Press Series in 
1903. It is intended to give a general view of 
the poet’s life and work and his place in Eng- 
lish literature. Of necessity it is rather long. 
The other chapters are, in effect, essays on 
separate parts or aspects of Tennyson’s work. 
They were written at different times, printed 
in various magazines, and collected, substan- 
tially, in a book called The Poetry of Tennyson , 
which was fortunate enough to find many friends, 
and has now, after twelve editions, gone out of 
print. 

But behind this writing about Tennyson 
there lie some twenty years of simple, human, 
vii 


PREFACE 


non-literary reading of his poetry. Of this, it 
may be permissible to tell something here, by 
way of preface, or background. It is a per- 
sonal story, but it has a certain bearing on the 
general subject of the love of poetry, — the seed 
of which is more common than most people 
suppose, but which often needs culture to grow. 

It all began with the gift of a dollar, which 
a boy received on his fourteenth birthday from 
a very pleasant old lady. His whim led him 
into a bookshop to spend this money, which 
burned in his pocket; and his guardian angel, 
or possibly some prophetic instinct in the lame 
little bookseller, directed his unconscious choice 
to a book called Enoch Arden . It was a pirated 
edition, and therefore cheap, for this happened 
in the days when the American publishers still 
practised literary brigandage, and the Amer- 
ican people were still willing to believe that it 
was more desirable to get books at a low price 
than to get them in a fair way. But the boy 
was not far enough out of the age of barbarism 
to feel any moral scruple on a point like this. 
So the book was bought for fifty cents, and it 
became the key which let him into the garden 
and palace of poetry, there to find a joy passing 
his delight in wild adventure-books of the Mayne 
Reid type. 

viii 


PREFACE 


Not that this was his first book of poems. 
He had lived in a library, and was already the 
proprietor of a small bookcase of his own. But 
hitherto poetry had seemed to him like some- 
thing foreign and remote, much less interest- 
ing than prose, fiction or even some kinds of 
history. He had read plenty of poems, of course, 
and had tried his hand at making verses. But 
the formal and artificial side of poetry was still 
the most prominent to his mind. It was some- 
thing to be translated and scanned and parsed. 
P. O vidius Naso was an abomination to him, 
and Pope’s Rape of the Lock a weariness to the 
flesh. They belonged to the tedious, profitable 
world of education and examination. 

But Enoch Arden evidently belonged to life. 
It was a story about real people. And then, it 
seemed to the boy so beautifully told. There 
was such a glow in it, such colour, such a swing 
and sweep of musical words, such a fine picture 
of a brave man, and at the end such a sad touch 
to bring the tears into your eyes, — all by your- 
self, you understand, when no one could see 
you and laugh at you. The touches of florid 
decoration did not trouble him then, for he 
was young. Why, this was as good as a novel, 
— yes, in a way it was better, for there was a 
charm in the movement of the verse, the rise 


IX 


PREFACE 


and fall, the ebb and flow, that seemed to stir 
the feelings and make them deeper and fuller. 

So the boy became a lover of poetry, and 
began to look around him for other poems which 
should give him the same kind of pleasure. Of 
course, he found many of them, ancient and 
modern. His capacity of enjoyment increased, 
as his taste broadened. He passed along the 
lines of new sympathies from one poet to an- 
other, discovered the touch of life in books 
which he had thought were dry and dead, and 
learned to appreciate beauties of which he had 
not suspected the existence. Even the poets 
of Greece and Rome began to say something 
to his heart. They were no longer shadows of 
mighty names, but real makers of real things 
in the enduring world of poesy. 

The boy came to understand, as he grew into 
man’s estate, that there were other, and yet 
loftier, masters in the realm of song; but Tenny- 
son still held the first place in his affections. 
There was a singular charm in the manner and 
accent of this poet, so melodious, so fluent, so 
clear, and yet so noble and powerful. Tenny- 
son seemed to be the one, among all the Eng- 
lish poets, who was in closest touch with the 
modern world. He not only led the boy for 
the first time into the regions of poetry; he 


x 


PREFACE 


also kept company, through all the experiences 
of life, with the young man. 

When love began to speak in his heart, it 
found an echo in Maud , and “Locksley Hall/’ 
and “The Gardener’s Daughter,” — rather ro- 
mantic love, of course, for that was the fashion 
of the time. When doubt began to trouble his 
mind, he turned to “Two Voices” and In Me - 
moriam , to learn that it was no new thing for 
faith to have to fight for its life. When the 
larger problems of human duty and destiny be- 
gan to press upon him, he saw them pictured 
in the Idylls of the King and “The Palace of 
Art;” and he read a fine answer to them in 
such poems as “Will,” and “Wages,” and the 
“Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.” 
When he began to take that broader interest 
in humanity which only comes with years, he 
found in “Ulysses” and “Lucretius” and “St. 
Simeon Stylites” and “The Northern Farmer” 
and “Rizpah,” convincing portraits of living 
souls. And when at last, after many happy 
years, sorrow entered his house, he turned again 
to In Memoriam , and it brought him more com- 
fort than any book in the world save One. 

It was not unnatural, then, that this man 
should be a Tennysonian, not as a matter of 
theory, but as an affair of experience. And 


xi 


PREFACE 


the time came when he felt the wish to make 
some acknowledgment of the debt which he 
owed to this poet, to set down some more care- 
ful estimate of the influences which have flowed 
from his poetry into the life of the present age, 
and to give some reasons for thinking that Ten- 
nyson stood among the great poets, if not on 
a level with the greatest. So these essays were 
written. 

The grateful sense of benefits received which 
entered into their first writing has not waned, 
but increased. Certain judgments on par- 
ticular poems have been modified; certain 
comparisons have been made less absolute; 
a certain exclusiveness of admiration, natural 
to youthful partisanship, has passed away. I 
have learned that it is no reproach to recognise 
the limitations of your hero, and realised that 
Tennyson is not exempt from les defauts de ses 
qualites . But on the other hand my positive 
reasons for admiring him have grown clearer 
and stronger, and I have perceived the beauty i 
and value of certain poems which once I ac- 
cepted merely because they were his. So these 
essays have gained, I venture to believe, in 
many respects, and have a better title to be 
called “studies.” 

At all events, I send them out in their new 
xii 


PREFACE 


form for the last time to find such readers as 
providence has designed for them, with the 
hope that they may serve as guides and inter- 
preters in a region of delight which well repays 
many visits. 

The poet who can be read only once, is hardly 
worth reading at all. But he whose work yields 
new meaning and fresh pleasure as often as 
we come back to it, belongs to the company 
of our unfailing friends in the spirit. The poetry 
of Tennyson, like good music, improves with 
every hearing. 

Henry van Dyke. 

Avalon, October 1, 1920. 


Xlll 












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CONTENTS 


I. 

The Man and His Work 

1 

II. 

The First Flight 

113 

III. 

The Palace of Art 

127 

IV. 

Milton and Tennyson 

151 

V. 

The Princess and Maud 

m. 

VI. 

In Memoriam 


VII. 

Idylls of the King 

2m 

VIII. 

The Dramatic Trilogy 

303 

IX. 

The Bible in Tennyson 

324 

X. 

Fruit from an Old Tree 

355 


Appendix 



A List of Biblical References 

377 


Bibliography 

413 










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THE MAN AND HIS WORK 



















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I 

THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


i 

Tennyson’s place in the nineteenth century 

“ The voice of him the master and the sire 
Of one whole age and legion of the lyre , 

Who sang his morning-song when Coleridge still 
Uttered dark oracles from Highgate Hill , 

And with new launched argosies of rhyme 
Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. 

To him nor tender nor heroic muse 
Did her divine confederacy refuse: 

To all its moods the lyre of life he strung , 

And notes of death fell deathless from his tongue , 
Himself the Merlin of his magic strain , 

He bade old glories break in bloom again; 

And so, exempted from oblivious gloom , 

Through him these days shall fadeless break in bloom." 

William Watson, 1892. 

rpENNYSON seems to us, in the early part 
of the Twentieth Century, the most rep- 
resentative poet of the English-speaking world 
in the Nineteenth Century. Indeed it is doubt- 
ful whether any other writer during the last 
3 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


hundred years has reflected, so clearly and so 
broadly, in verse or prose, the features of that 
composite age. The history of its aspirations 
and conflicts, its dreams and disappointments, 
its aesthetic revivals and scientific discoveries, 
its questioning spirit in religion and its dog- 
matic spirit in practical affairs, its curious learn- 
ing and social enthusiasms and military reac- 
tions, its ethical earnestness, and its ever deep- 
ening and broadening human sympathy, may 
be read in the poetry of Tennyson. 

Other poets may reflect some particular 
feature of the century more fully, but it is 
because they reflect it more exclusively. Thus 
Byron stands for the spirit of revolt against 
tyranny, Shelley for the dream of universal 
brotherhood, Keats for the passionate love of 
pure beauty, Matthew Arnold for the sadness 
of parting with ancient faiths, Robert Browning 
for the spirit of scientific curiosity and the rest- 
less impulse of action, and Rudyard Kipling 
expresses the last phase of the century, the 
revival of militant imperialism, as well as it 
can be uttered in verse. 

Wordsworth, indeed, has a more general 
range of meditative interest, and his work has 
therefore a broader philosophic meaning. But 
his range of imaginative sympathy, the sphere 
4 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


within which he feels intensely and speaks 
vividly, is limited by his own individuality, 
deep, strong, unyielding, and by his secluded 
life among the mountains of Westmoreland. 
When he moves along his own line his work 
shines with a singular and unclouded lustre; 
at other times his genius fails to penetrate 
his material with the light of poesy. Much 
of his verse, serious and sincere, represents 
Wordsworth’s reflections upon life, rather than 
the reflection of life in Wordsworth’s poetry. 
In the metrical art, too, perfect as he is in cer- 
tain forms, such as the sonnet, the simple lyric, 
the stately ode, his mastery is far from wide. 
In narrative poetry he seldom moves with swift- 
ness or certainty; in the use of dramatic mo- 
tives to intensify a lyric, a ballad, an idyl, he 
has little skill. 

But Tennyson, at least in the maturity of 
his powers, has not only a singularly receptive 
and responsive mind, open on all sides to im- 
pressions from nature, from books, and from 
human life around him, and an imaginative 
sympathy, which makes itself at home and 
works dramatically in an extraordinary range 
of characters: he has also a wonderful mastery 
of the technics of the poetic art, which enables 
him to give back in a fitting form of beauty 
5 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


the subject which his genius has taken into 
itself. No other English poet since the Eliza- 
bethan age has used so many kinds of verse 
so well. No other has shown in his work a 
sensitiveness to the movements of his own time 
at once so delicate and so broad. To no other 
has it been given to write with undimmed eye 
and undiminished strength for so long a period 
of time, and thus to interpret in poetry so 
many of the thoughts and feelings of the cen- 
tury in which he lived. 

Whether a temperament so receptive, and an 
art so versatile, are characteristic of the high- 
est order of genius, is an open question, which 
it is not necessary to decide nor even to dis- 
cuss here. Certainly it would be absurd to 
maintain that Tennyson’s success in dealing 
with all subjects and in all forms of verse is 
equal. His dramas, for instance, do not stand 
in the first rank. His two epics. The Princess 
and Idylls of the King , have serious defects, 
the one in structure, the other in substance. 

But, on the other hand, the broad scope of 
his poetic interest and the variety as well as 
the general felicity of his art, helped to make 
him the most popular poet of his time and race. 
Tennyson has something for everybody. He 
is easy to read. He has charm. Thus he has 
6 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


found a wide audience, and his poetry has not 
only reflected, but powerfully influenced, the 
movements of his age. The poet whose words 
are quoted is a constant, secret guide of senti- 
ment and conduct. The man who says a thing 
first may be more original; he who says it best 
is more potent. The characters which Tenny- 
son embodied in his verse became memorable. 
The ideals which he expressed in music grew 
more clear and beautiful and familiar to the 
hearts of men, leading them insensibly forward. 
The main current of thought and feeling in 
the Nineteenth Century, at least among the 
English-speaking peoples, — the slow, steady, on- 
ward current of admiration, desire, hope, aspi- 
ration, and endeavour, — follows the line which 
is traced in the poetry of Tennyson. 

Now it is just this broad scope, this rich 
variety, this complex character of Tennyson’s 
work which make it representative. To get 
the full effect of this, one must read all the 
twenty-six volumes which he published, — - 
lyrical poems, ballads, English idyls, elegiac 
poems, war-songs, love-songs, dramas, poems 
of art, classical imitations, dramatic mono- 
logues, patriotic poems, idylls of chivalry, fairy 
tales, character studies, odes, religious medita- 
tions, and rhapsodies of faith. 

7 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


After such a reading it is natural to ask: 
How much of this large body of verse, so rep- 
resentative in its total effect, is permanent in 
its poetic value? How much of it, apart from 
the interest which it has for the student of lit- 
erary history, has a direct and intimate charm, 
a charm which is likely to be lasting, for the 
simple lover of poetry, the reader who turns to 
verse not chiefly for an increase of knowledge, 
but for a gift of pure pleasure and vital power ? 
How much of it is characterised by those quali- 
ties which distinguish Tennyson at his best, 
signed, as we may say, not merely with his 
name but with the mark of his individuality as 
an artist, and so entitled to a place in his per- 
sonal contribution to English poetry? 

It is on this residual gold that his fame 
will ultimately rest. But, though nearly thirty 
years have passed since his death, it is still too 
soon to estimate the amount of pure metal 
which Time will smelt from his ore. For the 
present we have to do with the body of his 
work, its relation to his life, and the factors 
which entered into the doing of it. 


8 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


ii 

AN OUTLINE OF TENNYSON’S LIFE 

“Brother of the greatest poets , true to nature , true to art. 
Lover of Immortal Love , uplifter of the human heart! 

Who shall cheer us with high music, who shall sing if thou 
depart?” in lucem transitus, 1892. 

Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of 
August, 1809, at Somersby, a little village in 
Lincolnshire. He was the fourth child in a 
family of twelve, eight boys and four girls, all 
of whom but two lived to pass the limit of 
three score years and ten. The stock was a 
strong one, probably of Danish origin, but with 
a mingled strain of Norman blood through the 
old family of d’Eyncourt, both branches of 
which, according to Burke’s Peerage, are repre- 
sented by the Tennysons. 

The poet’s father, the Rev. Dr. George Clay- 
ton Tennyson, was rector of Somersby and 
Wood Enderby. His wife, Elizabeth Fytche, 
was the daughter of the vicar of Louth, a neigh- 
bouring town. Dr. Tennyson was the eldest 
son of a lawyer of considerable wealth, but 
was disinherited, by some caprice of his father, 
in favour of a younger brother. The rector of 
Somersby was a man of large frame, vigourous 
9 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


mind, and variable temper. He had consider- 
able learning, of a broad kind, and his scholar- 
ship, if not profound, was practical, for he 
taught his sons the best of what they knew 
before they entered the university. A lover 
of music and architecture, fond of writing verse, 
genial and brilliant in social intercourse, ex- 
citable, warm-hearted, stern in discipline, gen- 
erous in sympathy, he was a personality of 
overflowing power; but at times he was subject 
to fits of profound depression and gloom, in 
which the memory of his father’s unkindness 
darkened his mind, and he seemed almost to 
lose himself in bitter and despondent moods. 
Mrs. Tennyson was a gentle, loving, happy 
character, by no means lacking in strength, 
but excelling in tenderness, ardent in feeling, 
vivid in imagination, fervent in faith. It is 
said that “the wicked inhabitants of a neigh- 
bouring village used to bring their dogs to her 
windows and beat them, in order to be bribed 
to leave off by the gentle lady, or to make ad- 
vantageous bargains by selling her the worth- 
less curs.” Her son Alfred drew her portrait 
lovingly in the poem called “Isabel,” and in 
the closing lines of The Princess : — 

Not learned , save in gracious household ways , 

Not perfect , nay, but full of tender wants , 

10 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

No Angel , but a dearer being , all dipt 
In Angel instincts , breathing Paradise , 

Interpreter between the gods and men , 

JTAo look’d all native to her place , and yet 
On tiptoe seem’d to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread , and a/Z male minds perforce 
Sway’d to her from their orbits as they moved , 

And girdled her with music . 

The poet’s loyal love for his father is expressed 
in the lines “To J. S.” Both parents saw in 
their child the promise of genius, and hoped 
great things from him. 

The boy grew up, if not precisely in Milton’s 
“quiet and still air of delightful studies,” yet in 
an atmosphere that was full of stimulus for the 
imagination and favourable to the unfolding of 
lively powers of thought and feeling. It was an 
obscure hamlet of less than a hundred inhabi- 
tants where the Tennysons resided, but it was a 
full home in which they lived, — full of children, 
full of books, full of music, full of fanciful games 
and pastimes, full of human interests, full of life. 
The scenery about Somersby is friendly and con- 
soling; gray hills softly sloping against the sky; 
wide-branching elms, trembling poplars, and 
drooping ash-trees; rich gardens, close-embow- 
ered, full of trailing roses, crowned lilies, and 
purple-spiked lavender; long ridges of pasture 
11 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


land where the thick-fleeced sheep are herded; 
clear brooks purling over ribbed sand and 
golden gravel, with many a curve and turn; 
broad horizons, low-hung clouds, mellow sun- 
light; birds a plenty, flowers profuse. All these 
sweet forms Nature printed on the boy’s mind. 
Every summer brought a strong contrast, when 
the family went to spend their holiday in a cot- 
tage close beside the sea, on the coast of Lin- 
colnshire, among the tussocked ridges of the 
sand-dunes, looking out upon 

The hollow ocean-ridges, roaring into cataracts . 

The boy had an intense passion for the sea, 
and learned to know all its moods and aspects. 
“Somehow,” he said, later in life, “water is 
the element I love best of all the four.” 

When he was seven years old he was sent to 
the house of his grandmother at Louth, to at- 
tend the grammar-school. But it was a hard 
school with a rough master, and the boy hated 
it. After three years he came home to con- 
tinue his studies under his father. 

His closest comrade in the home was his 
brother Charles, a year older than himself. 
(See In Memoriam , Ixxix, and “Prefatory Poem 
to My Brother’s Sonnets.”) The two lads had 
many tastes in common, especially their love 

n 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


of poetry. They read widely, and offered the 
sincerest tribute of admiration to their favourite 
bards. Alfred’s first attempt at writing verse 
was made when he was eight years old: some 
lines in praise of flowers, in imitation of Thom- 
son, the only poet whom he then knew. A 
little later Pope’s Iliad fascinated him, and he 
produced many hundreds of lines in the same 
style and metre. At twelve he took Scott for 
his model, and turned out an epic of six thou- 
sand lines. Then Byron became his idol. He 
wrote lyrics full of gloom and grief, a romantic 
drama in blank verse, and imitations of the 
Hebrew Melodies . 

Some of the fruitage of these young labours 
may be seen in the volume entitled Poems by 
Two Brothers , which was published anony- 
mously by Charles and Alfred Tennyson, at 
Louth, in 1827. The motto on the title-page 
of the plump, modest little volume is: Hcec nos 
novimus esse nihil . It is because of this knowl- 
edge that the book has value as a document 
in the history of Tennyson’s development. It 
shows a receptive mind, a quick, immature 
fancy, and considerable fluency and variety 
in the use of metre. It marks a distinct stage 
of his growth, — the period when his strongest 
poetic impulse was imitative. 

13 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

In 1828 Tennyson, with his brother Charles, 
entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Almost 
from the beginning he was a marked man in 
the undergraduate world. His personal appear- 
ance was striking. Tall, large-limbed, deep- 
chested; with a noble head and abundance of 
dark, wavy hair; large, brown eyes, dreamy, 
yet bright; swarthy complexion ( tc almost like 
a gypsy,” said Mrs. Carlyle) ; and a profile like 
a face on a Roman coin; he gave the immedi- 
ate impression of rare gifts and power in re- 
serve. “I remember him well,” wrote Edward 
Fitzgerald, “a sort of Hyperion.” His natural 
shyness and habits of solitude kept him from 
making many acquaintances, but his friends 
were among the best and most brilliant men in 
the University: the most intimate of all was 
‘Arthur Henry Hallam. This was an extraor- 
dinary circle of youths; distinguished for scholar- 
ship, wit, eloquence, freedom of thought; prom- 
ising great things, which most of them achieved. 
Among these men Tennyson’s strength of mind 
and character was recognised, but most of all 
they were proud of him as a coming poet. In 
their college rooms, with an applauding audience 
around him, he would chant in his deep, sono- 
rous voice such early poems as “The Hesper- 
ides,” “Oriana,” “The Lover’s Tale.” 

14 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


He did not neglect his studies, the classics, 
history, and the natural sciences; but his gen- 
eral reading meant more to him. He was a 
member of an inner circle called the “Apostles,” 
a society devoted to “religion and radicalism.” 
(See In Memoriam , Ixxxvii .) The new spirit, 
represented in literature by Coleridge, Words- 
worth, Shelley, Keats, took possession of him. 
He went back to the Elizabethan age, to Mil- 
ton’s early poems, as the fountain-heads of 
English lyrical poetry. Not now as an imitator, 
but as a kindred artist, he gave himself to the 
search for beauty, freedom, delicate truth to 
nature, romantic charm. 

His poem of “Timbuctoo,” which won the 
Chancellor’s gold medal in 1829, was only a 
working-over of an earlier poem on “The Battle 
of Armageddon,” and he thought little of it. 
But in 1830 he published a slender volume en- 
titled Poems , Chiefly Lyrical , which shows the 
quality of his work in this period when the 
aesthetic impulse was dominant in him. It is 
marked by freshness of fancy, melody of metre, 
vivid descriptive touches, and above all by 
what Arthur Hallam, in his thoughtful review 
of the volume, called “a strange earnestness in 
his worship of beauty.” 

In the summer of 1830 Hallam and Tenny- 
15 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


son made a journey together to the Pyrenees, 
to carry some funds which had been raised in 
England to the Spanish insurgents who were 
fighting for liberty. Tennyson was not in sym- 
pathy with the conservatism which then, as 
in Wordsworth’s day, made Cambridge seem 
narrow and dry and heartless to men of free 
and ardent spirit. In 1831 the illness and death 
of his father made it necessary for him to leave 
college and go home to live with the family 
at Somersby, where he remained for six years. 
In 1832 he published his second volume of 
Poems , dated 1833. 

The tone and quality of this volume are the 
same that we find in its predecessor, but the 
manner is firmer, stronger, more assured. There 
is also a warmer human interest in such poems 
as “The Miller’s Daughter” and “The May 
Queen”; and in “The Palace of Art” there is 
a distinct intimation that the purely aesthetic 
period of his poetic development is nearly at 
an end. 

The criticism which these two volumes re- 
ceived, outside of the small circle of Tenny- 
son’s friends and admirers, was severe and 
scornful. Tennyson felt this contemptuous 
treatment deeply. It seemed to him that the 
English people would never like his work. His 
16 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

sesthetic period closed in gloom and discourage- 
ment. 

But far heavier than any literary disappoint- 
ment was the blow that fell in 1833 when his 
dearest friend, Arthur Hallam, to whom his 
sister Emilia was promised in marriage, died 
suddenly in Vienna. This great loss, coming 
to Tennyson at a time when the first joy of 
youth was already overcast by clouds of lone- 
liness and despondency, was the wind of des- 
tiny that drove him from the pleasant harbour 
of dreams out upon the wide, strange, un- 
charted sea of spiritual strife and sorrow, — the 
sea which seems so bitter and so wild, but 
on whose farther shore those who bravely make 
the voyage find freedom and security and peace 
and the generous joy of a larger, nobler life. 
The problems of doubt and faith which had 
been worked out with abstract arguments and 
fine theories in the “ Apostles’ ” society at 
Cambridge, now became personal problems for 
Tennyson. He must face them and find some 
answer, if his life was to have a deep and en- 
during harmony in it, — a harmony in which 
the discords of fear and self-will and despair 
would dissolve. The true answer, he felt sure, 
could never be found in selfish isolation. The 
very intensity of his grief purified it as by fire, 
17 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


made it more humane, more sympathetic. His 
conflict with “the spectres of the mind” was 
not for himself alone, but for others who must 
wrestle as he did, with sorrow and doubt and 
death. The deep significance, the poignant 
verity, the visionary mystery of human exist- 
ence in all its varied forms, pressed upon him. 
Like the Lady of Shalott in his own ballad, 
he turned from the lucid mirror of fantasy, the 
magic web of art, to the real world of living 
joy and grief. But it was not a curse, like that 
which followed her departure from her clois- 
tered tower, that came upon the poet, drawn 
and driven from the tranquil, shadowy region 
of exquisite melodies and beautiful pictures. It 
was a blessing: the blessing of clearer, stronger 
thought, deeper, broader feeling, more power 
to understand the world and more energy to 
move it. 

Tennyson’s personal sorrow for the loss of 
Hallam is expressed in the two lyrics, “Break, 
break, break” and “In the Valley of Cauteretz,” 
poems which should always be read together as 
the cry of grief and the answer of consolation. 
His long spiritual struggle with the questions 
of despair and hope, of duty and destiny, which 
were brought home to him by the loss of his 
friend, is recorded in In Memoriam. The poem 
18 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

was begun at Somersby in 1833 and continued 
at different places and times, as the interwoven 
lyrics show, for nearly sixteen years. Though 
the greater part of it was written by 1842, it 
was not published until 1850. Mr. Gladstone 
thought it “the richest oblation ever offered 
by the affection of friendship at the tomb of 
the departed.” It is that and something more: 
it is the great English classic on the love of im- 
mortality and the immortality of love. Tenny- 
son said, “It was meant to be a kind of Divina 
Commedia , ending with happiness.” The cen- 
tral thought of the poem is 

9 Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

Wherein it is better now, and why the poet 
trusts it will be better still in the long future, — 
this is the vital question which the poem an- 
swers in music. 

But apart from these lyrics of personal grief, 
and this rich, monumental elegy, there are 
other poems of Tennyson, written between 
1833 and 1842, which show the extraordinary 
deepening and strengthening of his mind dur- 
ing this period of inward crisis. For ten years 
he published no book. Living with his mother 
and sisters at Somersby, at High Beech in Ep- 
19 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

ping Forest, at Tunbridge Wells, at Boxley 
near Maidstone; caring for the family, as the 
eldest son at home, and skilfully managing 
the narrow means on which they had to live; 
wandering through the country on long walking 
tours; visiting his friends in London now and 
then; falling in love finally and forever with 
Miss Emily Sellwood, to whom he became en- 
gaged in 1836, but whom he could not marry 
yet for want of money; he held fast to his voca- 
tion, and though he sometimes doubted whether 
the world would give him a hearing, he never 
wavered in his conviction that his mission in 
life was to be a poet. The years of silence were 
not years of indolence. Here is a memorandum 
of work: “Monday, History, German. Tuesday , 
Chemistry, German. Wednesday , Botany, Ger- 
man. Thursday , Electricity, German. Friday , 
Animal Physiology, German. Saturday , Me- 
chanics. Sunday , Theology. Next week , Italian 
in the afternoon. Third week , Greek. Eve- 
nings , Poetry.” Hundreds of lines were com- 
posed and never written; hundreds more were 
written and burned. So far from being “an 
artist long before he was a poet,” as Mr. It. H. 
Hutton said in his essay on Tennyson, he toiled 
terribly to make himself an artist, because he 
knew he was a poet. The results of this toil, 
20 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


in the revision of those of his early poems 
which he thought worthy to survive, and in 
the new poems which he was ready to publish, 
were given to the world in the two volumes of 
1842. 

The changes in the early poems were all in 
the direction of clearness, simplicity, a stronger 
human interest. The new poems included “The 
Vision of Sin,” “Two Voices,” “Ulysses,” 
“Morte d Arthur,” the conclusion of “The 
May Queen,” “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” 
“Dora,” “The Gardener’s Daughter,” “Locks- 
ley Hall,” “St. Agnes’ Eve,” “Sir Galahad.” 
With the appearance of these two volumes, 
Tennyson began to be a popular poet. But 
he did not lose his hold upon the elect, the “fit 
audience, though few.” The Quarterly Review , 
The Westminster Review , Dickens, Landor, 
Rogers, Carlyle, Edward Fitzgerald, Aubrey de 
Vere, and such men in England, Hawthorne, 
Emerson, Lowell, and Poe in America, recog- 
nised the charm and the power of his verse. 
In 1845 Wordsworth wrote to Henry Reed of 
Philadelphia, “Tennyson is decidedly the first 
of our living poets, and I hope will live to give 
the world still better things.” 

Such was the liberating and ennobling effect 
of the deeper personal .and spiritual impulse 
21 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


which came into his poetry with the experience 
of sorrow and inward conflict. 

From 1842 onward we find the poet, now 
better known to the world, coming into wider 
and closer contact with the general life of men. 
Not that he ever lost the unconventional free- 
dom of his dress and manner, the independence 
of his thought and taste, the singular frankness 
(almost brusquerie) of his talk, which was like 
thinking aloud. He never became what is called, 
oddly enough, a “society man.” He was inca- 
pable of roaring gently at afternoon teas or lit- 
erary menageries. He was unwilling to join 
himself to any party in politics, as Dryden and 
Swift and Addison, or even as Southey and 
Wordsworth, had done. But he had a sincere 
love for genuine human intercourse, in which real 
thoughts and feelings are uttered by real people 
who have something to say to one another; a 
vivid sense of the humourous aspects of life 
(shown in such poems as the two pictures of 
the “Northern Farmer,” “The Spinster’s Sweet- 
Arts,” “The Church-Warden”); and a broad 
interest in the vital questions and the popular 
movements of his time. If I am not mistaken, 
this period when his poetry began to make a 
wider appeal to the people is marked by the 
presence of a new impulse in his work. We 
22 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


may call it, for the sake of a name, the social 
impulse, meaning thereby that the poet now 
looks more often at his work in its relation to 
the general current of human affairs and turns 
to themes which have a place in public atten- 
tion. 

There was also at this time an attempt on 
Tennyson’s part to engage in business, which 
turned out to be a disastrous mistake. He 
was induced to go into an enterprise for the 
carving of wood by machinery. Into this he 
put all his capital; and some of the small pat- 
rimony of his brothers and sisters was embarked 
in the same doubtful craft. In 1843 the ship 
went down with all its lading, and the Tenny- 
sons found themselves on the coast of actual 
poverty. To add to this misfortune, the poet’s 
health gave way completely, and he was forced 
to spend a long time in a water-cure establish- 
ment, under treatment for hypochondria. 

In 1846 the grant of a pension of £200 from 
the Civil List, on the recommendation of Sir 
Robert Peel, cordially approved by the Queen, 
relieved the pressure of pecuniary need under 
which Tennyson had been left by the failure 
of his venture in wood. In 1847 he published, 
perhaps in answer to the demand for a longer 
and more sustained poem, The Princess ; A 
23 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

Medley. It is an epic, complete enough in struc- 
ture, but in substance half seripus and half bur- 
lesque. It tells the story of a king’s daughter 
who was fired with the ambition to emancipate, 
(and even to separate,) her sex from man, by 
founding a woman’s college extraordinary. This 
design was crossed by the efforts of an amourous, 
chivalrous, faintly ridiculous prince, who wooed 
her under difficulties and won her through the 
pity that overcame her when she saw him 
wounded almost to death by her brother. The 
central theme of the poem is the question of 
the higher education of women, but the style 
moves so obliquely in its mock heroics that it 
is hard to tell whether the argument is for or 
against. The diction is marked by Tennyson’s 
two most frequent faults, over-decoration and 
indirectness of utterance. It is much admired 
by girls at boarding-school; but the woman’s 
college of the present day does not regard its 
academic programme with favour. The poem 
rises at the close to a very sincere and splendid 
eloquence in praise of true womanhood. The 
intercalary songs, which were added in 1850, in- 
clude two or three of Tennyson’s best lyrics. 

In 1850 there were three important events in 
the poet’s life: his marriage with Miss Emily 
Sellwood; the publication of the long-laboured 
24 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


In Memoriam; and his appointment as Poet 
Laureate, to succeed Wordsworth, who had just 
died. The three events were closely connected. 
It was the £300 received in advance for In 
Memoriam that provided a financial basis for 
the marriage; and it was the profound admira- 
tion of the Prince Consort for this poem that 
determined the choice of Tennyson for the 
Laureateship. 

The marriage was in every sense happy. The 
poet’s wife was not only of a nature most ten- 
der and beautiful; she was also a wise counsel- 
lor, a steadfast comrade, as he wrote of her, — 

With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven s 
And a fancy as summer-new 

As the green of the bracken amid the glow of the heather . 

Their first home was made at Twickenham, and 
here their oldest and only surviving son, Hal- 
lam, was born. 

In 1852 the “Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of Wellington” was published. It was received 
with some disappointment and unfavourable 
criticism as the first production of the Laureate 
upon an important public event. But later and 
wiser critics incline to the opinion of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, who thought that the ode had 
“never been surpassed in any tongue or time.” 

25 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


In 1853 increasing returns from his books 
(about £500 a year) made it possible for Tenny- 
son to lease, and ultimately to buy, the house 
and small estate of Farringford, near the vil- 
lage of Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. It 
is a low, rambling, unpretentious, gray house, 
tree-embowered, ivy-mantled, in a 

careless-ordered garden , 

Close to the ridge of a noble dovm. 

His other home, Aldworth, near the summit of 
Black Down in Sussex, was not built until 
1868. A statelier house, though less picturesque, 
its attraction as a summer home lies in the 
beauty of its terraced rose-garden, the far- 
reaching view which it commands to the south, 
and the refreshing purity of the upland air that 
breathes around it. 

In 1854 the famous poem on “The Charge 
of the Light Brigade” was published in the 
London Examiner . It was included, with the 
Wellington Ode, in the volume entitled Maud , 
and Other Poems , which appeared in the fol- 
lowing year. Maud grew out of the dramatic 
lyric beginning “0 that ’twere possible,” in 
The Tribute , 1837. Sir John Simeon said to 
Tennyson that something more was needed to 
explain the story of this lyric. He then un- 
26 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

folded the central idea in a succession of lyrics 
in which the imaginary hero reveals himself 
and the tragedy of his life. The subtitle A 
Monodrama was added in 1875. When Tenny- 
son read the poem to me in 1892, he said: “It 
is dramatic, — the story of a man who has a 
touch of inherited insanity, morbid and selfish. 
The poem shows what love has done for him. 
The war is only an episode.” This is undoubt- 
edly true and just. Yet the vigour of the long 
invective against the corruptions of a selfish 
peace, with which the poem opens, and the 
enthusiasm of the patriotic welcome to the 
Crimean war, with which it closes, show some- 
thing of the way in which the poet’s mind 
was working. This volume together with The 
Princess may be taken as an illustration of the 
force of the social impulse which had now en- 
tered into Tennyson’s poetry to cooperate with 
the aesthetic impulse and the religious impulse 
in the full labours of his maturity. 

Tennyson was now forty-five years old. But 
there still lay before him nearly forty years in 
which he was to bring forth poetry in abun- 
dance, a rich, varied, unfailing harvest. It is 
true that before this wonderful period of ma- 
turity ended there were signs of age visible in 
some of his work, — a slackening of vigour, an 
27 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


uncertainty of touch, a tendency to overload 
his verse with teaching, a failure to remove the 
traces of labour from his art, a lack of courage 
and sureness in self-criticism. But it was long 
before these marks of decline were visible, and 
even then, more than any other English poet 
at an equal age, he kept, and in the hours of 
happy inspiration he revealed, the quick emo- 
tion, the vivid sensibility, the splendid courage 
of a heart that does not grow gray with years. 

In 1859 the first instalment of his most im- 
portant epic, Idylls of the King , appeared. It 
was followed in 1869 , in 1872 , in 1885 , by the 
other parts of the complete poem. In 1864 
Enoch Arden was published. In 1875 Queen 
Mary , the first of the dramas, came out, fol- 
lowed by Harold in 1876 , and The Cup and 
The Falcon and Bechet in 1884 . In 1880 Ballads , 
and Other Poems contained some of his best 
work, such as “Rizpah,” “The Revenge/’ “In 
the Children’s Hospital.” In 1885 Tiresias , and 
Other Poems appeared; in 1886 Lochsley Hall 
Sixty Years After ; in 1889 Demeter , and Other 
Poems , including “Romney’s Remorse,” “Vast- 
ness,” “The Progress of Spring,” “Merlin and 
the Gleam,” “The Oak,” “The Throstle,” and 
that supreme lyric which Tennyson wished to 
have printed last in every edition of his col- 
28 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


lected works, — “Crossing the Bar.” In 1892 
the long list closed with The Death of (Enone , 
Akbar’s Dream , and Other Poems . 

The life of the man who was producing, after 
middle age, this great body of poetry, was full, 
rich, and happy, — though shadowed by the 
death of his son Lionel on the voyage home 
from India in 1886. Secluded, as ever, from 
the busyness of the world, but in no sense sepa- 
rated from its deeper interests, Tennyson studied 
and wrought, delighting in intercourse with his 
friends and in 


converse with all forms 
Of the many-sided mind , 

And those whom passion hath not blinded , 
Subtle-thoughted , myriad-minded. 

In 1883 he accepted from the Queen the honour 
of a peerage (a baronetcy had been offered be- 
fore and refused), and was gazetted in the fol- 
lowing year as Baron of Aldworth and Farring- 
ford. For himself, he frankly said, the dignity 
was one that he did not desire; but he felt that 
he could not let his reluctance stand in the way 
of a tribute from the Throne to Literature. 
When he entered the House of Lords he took 
his seat on the cross-benches, showing that he 
did not wish to bind himself to any party. His 
29 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


first vote was cast for the Extension of the 
Franchise. 

At the close of August, 1892, when I visited 
him at Aldworth, he was already beginning 
to feel the warning touches of pain which pre- 
ceded his last illness. But he was still strong 
and mighty in spirit, a noble shape of man- 
hood, massive, large-browed, his bronzed face 
like the countenance of an antique seer, his 
thin hair scarcely touched with gray. He was 
working on the final proofs of his last volume 
and planning new poems. At table his talk 
was free, friendly, full of humour and common- 
sense. In the library he read from his poems 
the things which illustrated the subjects of 
which he had been speaking, passages from 
“Idylls of the King,” some of the songs, the 
“Northern Farmer (New Style) ” and, more fully, 
“Maud” and the Wellington Ode. His voice 
was deep, rolling, resonant. It sank to a note 
of tenderness, touched with prophetic solem- 
nity, as he read the last lines of the ode: — 

S peak no more of his renown , 

Lay your earthly fancies down , 

And in the vast cathedral leave him f 
God accept him , Christ receive him . 

On the 6th of October, 1892, between one 
and two o’clock in the morning, with the splen- 
30 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


dours of the full moon pouring in through the 
windows of the room where his family were 
watching by his bed, he passed into the world 
of light. His body was laid to rest on the 12th 
of October, in Westminster Abbey, next to the 
grave of Robert Browning, and close beside 
the monument of Chaucer. The multitude of 
mourners assembled at the funeral, — scholars, 
statesmen* nobles, veterans of the Light Bri- 
gade, poor boys of the Gordon Home, — told 
how widely and deeply Tennyson had moved 
the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men 
by his poetry, which was, in effect, his life. 

hi 

Tennyson’s use of his sources 

Ein Quidam sagt> “ Ich bin von Jceiner Schule! 

Kein Meister lebt mil dem ich buhle; 

Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt , 

Das ich von Todten was gelernt” 

Das heisst , wenn ich ihn recht ver stand; 

“Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand.” 

Goethe. 

Emerson was of the same opinion as Goethe 
in regard to originality. Writing of Shakespeare 
he says, “The greatest genius is the most in- 
debted man,” and defends the poet’s right to 
take his material wherever he can find it. Shake- 
31 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


speare certainly exercised large liberty in that 
respect and did not even trouble himself to 
look for a defence. Wordsworth wrote, “Multa 
tulit fecitque must be the motto of all those who 
are to last.” Most of the men whom the world 
calls great in poetry have drawn freely from 
the sources which are open to all, not only in 
nature, but also in the literature of the past, 
and in the thoughts and feelings of men around 
them, — the inchoate literature of the present. 

From all these sources Tennyson took what 
he could make his own, and used it to enrich 
his verse. The gold thus gathered was not 
all new-mined; some of it had passed through 
other hands; but it was all new-minted, — fused 
in his imagination and fashioned into forms 
bearing the mark of his own genius. My ob- 
ject in the present writing is to give some idea 
of the way in which he collected his material 
and the method by which he wrought it into 
poetry. 

(1) With nature Tennyson dealt at first 
hand. A sensitive, patient, joyful observer, 
he watched the clouds, the waters, the trees, 
the flowers, the birds, for new disclosures of 
their beauty, new suggestions of their sym- 
bolic relation to the life of man. In a letter 
written to Mr. Dawson of Montreal, comment- 
32 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


ing upon the statement that certain lines of 
natural description in his work were suggested 
by something in Wordsworth or Shelley, he 
demurs, with perceptible warmth, and goes on 
to say: “ There was a period in my life when, 
as an artist. Turner for instance, takes rough 
sketches of landskip, etc., in order to work them 
eventually into some great picture, so I was in 
the habit of chronicling, in four or five words or 
more, whatever might strike me as picturesque 
in nature. I never put these down, and many 
and many a line has gone away on the north 
wind, but some remain.” Then he gives some 
illustrations, among them, 

A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight , 

which was suggested by a night at Torquay, 
when the sky was covered with thin vapour. 
The line was afterwards embodied in The 
Princess (i, 244). 

But in saying that he never wrote these ob- 
servations down, the poet misremembers his 
own custom; for his note-books contain many 
luminous fragments of recorded vision, like the 
following: — 

( Bahbicombe .) Like serpent-coils upon the deep. 
(. Bonchurch .) A little salt pool fluttering round a 
stone upon the shore. (“ Guinevere,” Z. 50.) 

33 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


{The river Shannon, on the rapids .) Ledges of 
battling water. 

{Cornwall.) Sea purple and green like a pea- 
cock’s neck. 

{Voyage to Norway.) One great wave, green- 
shining past with all its crests smoking 
high up beside the vessel. 

This last passage is transformed, in “ Lance- 
lot and Elaine,” into a splendid simile: — 

They couch’d their spears and prick’d their steeds , and thus, 
Their plumes driv’n backward by the wind they made 
In moving , all together down upon him 
Bare , as a wild wave in the wide North-sea , 
Green-glimmering toward the summit , bears , with all 
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, 

Down on a bark , and overbears the bark , 

And him that helms it, so they overbore 
Sir Lancelot and his charger. 

Tennyson was always fond of travel, and 
from all his journeys he brought back jewels 
which we find embedded here and there in his 
verse. The echoes in “The Bugle Song” were 
heard on the Lakes of Killarney in 1842. The 
Silver Horns of the Alps and the “wreaths of 
dangling water-smoke,” in the “small sweet 
idyl” from “The Princess,” were seen at Lauter- 
brunnen in 1846. In “(Enone,” — 

34 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


My tall dark pines that plumed the craggy ledge 
High over the blue gorge, and all between 
The snowy peak and snow-white cataract , — 

were sketched in the Pyrenees in 1830. In the 
first edition of the poem he brought in a beau- 
tiful species of cicala, with scarlet wings, which 
he saw on his Spanish journey; though he was 
conscientious enough to add a footnote explain- 
ing that “ probably nothing of the kind exists 
in Mount Ida.” 

It is true that in later editions he let the 
cicala and the note go; but this example will 
serve to illustrate the defect, or at least the 
danger, which attends Tennyson’s method of 
working up his pictures. There is a temptation 
to introduce too many details from the remem- 
bered or recorded “rough sketches,” to crowd 
the canvas, to use bits of description which, 
however beautiful in themselves, do not always 
add to the strength of the picture, and some- 
times even give it an air of distracting splen- 
dour. Ornateness is a fault from which Tenny- 
son is not free. In spite of his careful revision 
there are still some red- winged cicalas left in his 
verse. There are passages in “The Princess,” 
in “Enoch Arden,” and in some of the “Idylls 
of the King,” for example, which are bewildering 
in their opulence. 


35 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


But on the other hand it must be said that 
very often this richness of detail is precisely 
the effect which he wishes to produce, and in 
certain poems, like “Recollections of the Ara- 
bian Nights,” “The Lotos-Eaters,” and “The 
Palace of Art,” it enhances the mystical, dream- 
like atmosphere in which the subject is con- 
ceived. If he sometimes puts in too many 
touches, he seldom, if ever, makes use of any 
that is not in harmony with the fundamental 
tone, the colour-key of his picture. Notice the 
accumulation of dark images of loneliness and 
desertion in “Mariana,” the cold, gray sad- 
ness and weariness of the landscape in “The 
Dying Swan,” and the serene rapture that 
clothes the earth with emerald and the sea with 
sapphire in the song of triumph and love in 
Maud , I. xviii. 

There are passages in Tennyson’s verse where 
his direct vision of nature is illumined by his 
memory of the things that other poets have 
written when looking at the same scene. Thus 
“Frater Ave atque Vale” is filled, as it should 
be, with touches from Catullus. But how deli- 
cate is the art with which they are blended and 
harmonised, how exquisite the shimmer of the 
argent-leaved orchards which Tennyson adds 
in the last line. 

Sweet Catullus's all-but-island , olive-silvery Sirmiol 
36 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


In “The Daisy ” (a series of pictures from 
an Italian journey made with his wife in 1851, 
recalled to the poet’s memory by finding, be- 
tween the leaves of a book which he was read- 
ing in Edinburgh, a daisy plucked on the Spliigen 
Pass), we find literary and historical reminis- 
cences interwoven with descriptions. At Cogo- 
letto he remembers the young Columbus who 
was bom there. On Lake Como, which Virgil 
praised in the Georgies , he recalls 

The rich Virgilian rustic measure 
Of Lari Maxume , all the way. 

At Varenna the story of Queen Theodolind 
comes back to him. 

There are critics who profess to regard such 
allusions and reminiscences as indicating a lack 
of originality in a poet. But why? Tennyson 
saw Italy not with the eyes of a peasant, but 
with the enlarged and sensitive vision of a 
scholar. The associations of the past entered 
into his perception of the spirit of place. New 
colours glowed on 

tower , or high hill-convent, seen 

A light amid its olives green; 

Or olive-hoary cape in ocean; 

Or rosy blossom in hot ravine , 

because he remembered the great things that 
had been done and suffered in the land through 
37 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


which he was passing. Is not the landscape of 
imagination as real as the landscape of sight? 
Must a man be ignorant in order to be original ? 
Is true poetry possible only to him who looks 
at nature with a mind as bare as if he had never 
opened a book? Milton did not think so. 

Tennyson’s use of nature as the great source 
of poetic images and figures was for the most 
part immediate and direct; but often his vision 
was quickened and broadened by memories of 
what the great poets had seen and sung. Yet 
when he borrowed, here and there, a phrase, 
an epithet, from one of them, it was never done 
blindly or carelessly. He always verified his 
references to nature. The phrase borrowed is 
sure to be a true one, chosen with a delicate 
feeling for the best, translated with unfailing 
skill, and enhanced in beauty and significance 
by the setting which he gives to it. 

(2) For subjects, plots, and illustrations 
Tennyson turned often to the literature of the 
past. His range of reading, even in boyhood, 
was wide and various, as the notes to Poems by 
Two Brothers show. At the University he was 
not only a close student of the Greek and Latin 
classics, but a diligent reader of the English 
poets and philosophers, and a fair Italian scholar. 
In the years after he left college we find him 
38 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

studying Spanish and German. In later life he 
kept up his studies with undiminished ardour. 
In 1854 he was learning Persian, translating 
Homer and Virgil to his wife, and reading Dante 
with her. In 1867 he was working over Job , 
The Song of Solomon , and Genesis , in Hebrew. 
He takes the themes of “The Lotos-Eaters” 
and “The Sea-Fairies” from Homer; “The 
Death of (Enone” from Quintus Calaber; “Tire- 
sias” from Euripides; “Tithonus” from an 
Homeric Hymn; “Demeter” and “(Enone” 
from Ovid; “Lucretius” from St. Jerome; 
“St. Simeon Stylites” and “St. Telemachus” 
from Theodoret; “The Cup” from Plutarch; 
“A Dream of Fair Women” from Chaucer; 
“Mariana” from Shakespeare; “The Lover’s 
Tale” and “The Falcon” from Boccaccio; 
“Ulysses” from Dante; “The Revenge” from 
Sir Walter Raleigh; “The Brook” from Goethe; 
“The Voyage of Maeldune” from Joyce’s Old 
Celtic Romances ; “Akbar’s Dream” from the 
Persian, and “Locksley Hall” from the Arabic; 
“Romney’s Remorse” from Hayden’s Life of 
Romney; “Columbus” from Washington Ir- 
ving. In the Idylls of the King he has drawn 
upon Sir Thomas Malory, the Mabinogion of 
Lady Charlotte Guest, and the old French 
romances. His allusions and references to the 
39 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Bible are many and beautiful. But he never 
wrote a whole poem upon a scriptural subject, 
except a couple of Byronic imitations in Poems 
by Two Brothers . 

To understand his method of using a sub- 
ject taken from literature it may be well to 
study a few examples. 

The germ of “Ulysses” is found in the fol- 
lowing passage from Dante’s Inferno, xxvi, DO- 
129, where, in the eighth Bolgia, Ulysses ad- 
dresses the two poets : — 

“When I escaped 

From Circe, who beyond a circling year 
Had held me near Caieta by her charms , 

Ere thus Mneas yet had named the shore; 

Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence 
Of my old father, nor return of love , 

That should have crown'd Penelope with joy. 

Could overcome in me the zeal I had 
To explore the world, and search the ways of life, 
Mari’s evil and his virtue . Forth I sail'd 
Into the deep illimitable main. 

With but one bark, and the small faithful band 
That yet cleaved to me. As Iberia far. 

Far as Marocco, either shore I saw. 

And the Sardinian and each isle beside 
Which round that ocean bathes . Tardy with age 
Were I and my companions, when we came 
To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain'd 
The boundaries not be overstepp'd by man. 

40 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

The walls of Seville to my right I left , 

On the other hand already Ceuta passed. 

*Oh brothers !’ I began, * who to the west 
Through perils without number now have reach’d; 

To this the short remaining watch, that yet 
Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof 
Of the unpeopled world, following the track 
Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang. 

Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes. 

But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.’ 

With these few words I sharpen’d for the voyage 
The mind of my associates, that I then 
Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn 
Our poop we turn’d, and for the witless flight 
Made our oars wings , still gaining on the left. 

Each star of the other pole night now beheld , 

And ours so low, that from the ocean floor 
It rose not.” * 

The central motive of the poem is undoubtedly 
contained in this passage: the ardent longing 
for action, for experience, for brave adventure, 
persisting in Ulysses to the very end of life. 
This Tennyson renders in his poem with ab- 
solute fidelity. But he departs from the original 
in several points. First, he makes the poem 
a dramatic monologue, or character-piece, 
spoken by Ulysses at Ithaca to his old com- 
panions. Second, he intensifies the dramatic 
contrast between the quiet narrow existence 

* Cary’s Translation ( 1806 ). 

41 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


on the island (11. 1-5; 33-43) and the free, joy- 
ous, perilous life for which Ulysses longs (11. 
11-32). Third, he adds glimpses of natural 
scenery in wonderful harmony with the spirit 
of the poem (ZZ. 2, 44, 45, 54-61). Fourth, he 
brings out with extraordinary vividness the 
feeling which he tells us was in his own heart 
when he wrote the poem, “the need of going 
forward and braving the struggle of life.” 

Naturally enough many phrases are used 
which recall classic writers. “The rainy Hy- 
ades” belong to Virgil; the rowers “sitting well 
in order,” to Homer. To “rust unburnish’d” 
(Z. 23) is an improved echo from the speech of 
Shakespeare’s Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida. 
All this adds to the vraisemblance of the poem. 
It is the art by which the poet evokes in our 
minds the associations with which literature 
has surrounded the figure of Ulysses, a distinct 
personality, an enduring type in the world of 
imagination. The proof of the poet’s strength 
lies in his ability to meet the test of comparison 
between his own work and that classic back- 
ground of which his allusions frankly remind 
us, and in his power to add something new, 
vivid, and individual to the picture which has 
been painted from so many different points of 
view by the greatest artists. This test, it seems 
42 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

to me, Tennyson endures magnificently. His 
Ulysses is not unworthy to rank with the wan- 
derer of Homer, of Dante, of Shakespeare. No 
lines of theirs are larger than Tennyson’s: — 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro 9 
Gleams that untravelVd world whose margin fades 
For ever and for ever when I move. 

Nor has any poet embodied “the unconquer- 
able mind of man” more nobly than in the 
final lines of this poem: — 

Tho 9 much is taken , much abides; and tho 9 
We are not now that strength which in old days 
Mov 9 d earth and heaven; that which we are , we are ; — 
One equal temper of heroic hearts , 

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

A poem of very different character is “A 
Dream of Fair Women,” written when the 
aesthetic impulse was strongest in Tennyson. 
The suggestion came from Chaucer’s Legend of 
Good Women . How full and deep and nobly 
melancholy are the chords with which Ten- 
nyson enriches the dream-music to which 
Chaucer’s poem gives the key-note: — 

In every land 

I saw, wherever light illumineth. 

Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand 
The downward slope to death. 

43 


' STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Those far-renowned brides of ancient song 
Peopled the hollow dark , like burning stars. 

And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong. 

And trumpets blown for wars. 

Then follows a passage full of fresh and ex- 
quisite descriptions of nature, the scenery of 
his dream. 

Enormous elm-tree-boles did stoop and lean 
Upon the dusky brushwood underneath 
Their broad curved branches , fledged with clearest green. 
New from its silken sheath. 

I knew the flowers, I knew the leaves, I knew 
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn 
On those long, rank, dark wood-walks drench'd in dew. 
Leading from lawn to lawn. 

The smell of violets, hidden in the green. 

Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame 
The times when I remember to have been 
Joyful and free from blame. 

This is Tennyson's own manner, recognisable, 
imitable, but not easily equalled. Now come 
the fair women who people his visionary forest. 
Each one speaks to him and reveals herself by 
the lyric disclosure of her story. Only in one 
case — that of Rosamond — does the speaker 
utter her name. In all the others, it is by some 
touch of description made familiar to us by 
44 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


<£ ancient song,” that the figure is recognised. 
Iphigenia tells how she stood before the altar 
in Aulis, and saw her sorrowing father, and 
the waiting ships, and the crowd around her, 
and the knife which was to shed the victim’s 
blood. (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , i, 85 ff.) 
Cleopatra recalls the nights of revelry with 
Mark Antony (Shakespeare, Antony and Cleo- 
patra, Act i, sc. iv), his wild love {Act iv, sc. mi), 
her queenly suicide, robed and crowned, with 
the bite of the aspic on her breast (Act v , sc. ii). 
Jephtha’s Daughter repeats the song with which 
she celebrated Israel’s victory over Ammon 
(Judges, xi). The dream rounds itself into royal 
splendour, glittering with gems from legend and 
poetry: then it fades, never to be repeated, — 

How eagerly I sought to strike 
Into that wondrous track of dreams again / 

But no two dreams are like. 

Yet another type of subject taken from lit- 
erature is found in “Dora.” Mr. J. Churton 
Collins says: “The whole plot ... to the 
minutest details is taken from a prose story 
of Miss Mitford’s. . . . That the poet’s in- 
debtedness to the novel has not been intimated, 
is due no doubt to the fact that Tennyson, like 
Gray, leaves his commentators to track him to 
45 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


his raw material.” * To understand the care- 
lessness of Mr. Collins as a critic it is only neces- 
sary to point out the fact that the reference to 
Miss Mitford’s story was distinctly given in 
a note to the first edition of the poem in 1842. 
But to appreciate fully the bold inaccuracy of 
his general statement one needs to read the 
pastoral of “Dora Creswell,” in Our Village , 
side by side with Tennyson’s “Dora.” In Miss 
Mitford’s story Dora is a little girl; in Tenny- 
son’s poem she is a young woman. Miss Mit- 
ford tells nothing of the conflict between the 
old farmer and his son about the proposed mar- 
riage with Dora; Tennyson makes it prominent 
in the working out of the plot. Miss Mitford 
makes the son marry the delicate daughter of 
a school-mistress; but in Tennyson’s poem his 
choice falls on Mary Morrison, a labourer’s 
daughter, and, as the poem implies, a vigourous, 
healthy, independent girl. In Miss Mitford’s 
story there is no trace of Dora’s expulsion from 
the old farmer’s house after she has succeeded, 
by a stratagem, in making him receive his little 
grandson, Mary’s child; but Tennyson makes 
this the turning point of the most pathetic part 
of his poem, — Dora’s winning of Mary’s love, 

* J. Churton Collins, Illustrations of Tennyson. Chatto and Windus, 
1891. 


46 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


and their resolve that they will live together 
and bring up the child free from the influence 
of the old farmer’s hardness. When the old 
man at last gives way, and takes Mary and 
Dora and the child home, Tennyson adds the 
final touch of insight to the little drama: — 

So those four abode 
Within one house together; and as years 
Went forward Mary took another mate; 

But Dora lived unmarried till her death . 

The entire poem is written in the simplest 
language. It does not contain a single simile, 
nor a word used in an unfamiliar sense. Words- 
worth said, “Mr. Tennyson, I have been en- 
deavouring all my life to write a pastoral like 
your ‘Dora,’ and have not succeeded.” The 
contrast between the prose story with its abun- 
dance of pretty details, and the poem in beauty 
unadorned, illustrates the difference between 
neat work and fine work. 

The vivifying power of Tennyson’s imagina- 
tion is nowhere shown more clearly than in 
the great use which he makes of comparatively 
small hints and phrases from other writers. In 
his hands they seem to expand. They are lifted 
up, animated, ennobled. 

A good illustration of this kind of work may 
be seen in the way in which he handles the ma- 
47 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


terial taken from Sir Thomas Malory in the 
Movie <T Arthur. In Malory the King’s rebuke 
to the unfaithful knight runs thus: “Ah, traitor 
untrue, now hast thou betrayed me twice. Who 
would have weened that, thou that hast been 
to me so lief and dear? And thou art named 
a noble knight, and would betray me for the 
richness of the sword!” In Tennyson a new 
dramatic splendour enters into the reproach: — 

‘Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, 

Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! 

Authority forgets a dying king. 

Laid widow'd of the power in his eye 

That bow'd the will. I see thee what thou art. 

For thou, the latest-left of all my knights. 

In whom should meet the offices of all. 

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt; 

Either from lust of gold, or like a girl 
Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. 

Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice. 

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence: 

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, 

I will arise and slay thee with my hands' 

In Malory the King’s parting address, spoken 
from the barge, is: “Comfort thyself, and do 
as well as thou may’st, for in me is no trust 
for to trust in; for I will into the vale of Avilion 
to heal me of my grievous wound: and if thou 
48 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


hear never more of me pray for my soul.” In 
Tennyson these few words become the germ of 
the great passage beginning 

* The old order changeth y yielding place to new y 
And God fulfils himself in many ways , 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world y — 

and closing with one of the noblest utterances 
in regard to prayer that can be found in the 
world’s literature. 

Malory says, “And as soon as Sir Bedivere 
had lost the sight of the barge, he wept and 
wailed, and so took the forest.” Tennyson 
makes us see the dark vessel moving away: — 

The barge with oar and sail 
Moved from the brink , like some full-breasted swan 
That , fluting a wild carol ere her death , 

Ruffles her pure cold plume , and takes the flood 
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere 
Revolving many memories , till the hull 
Look'd one black dot against the verge of dawn , 

And on the mere the wailing died away. 

The difference here is between the seed of 
poetry and the flower fully unfolded. 

Instances of the same enlarging and trans- 
forming power of Tennyson’s genius may be 
noted in “The Revenge.” Again and again he 
takes a bare fact given by Sir Walter Raleigh 
49 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


or Froude, and makes it flash a sudden light- 
ning or roar a majestic thunder through the 
smoke of the wild sea-fight. The whole poem 
is scrupulously exact in its fidelity to the his- 
torical records, but it lifts the story on strong 
wings into the realm of vivid imagination. We 
do not merely hear about it: we see it, we 
feel it. 

Another illustration is found in “The Lotos- 
Eaters,” lines 156-167. This is expanded from 
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , Hi, 15. “The 
divinity of the gods is revealed, and their tran- 
quil abodes which neither winds do shake, nor 
clouds drench with rains, nor snow congealed 
by sharp frosts, harms with hoary fall: an ever 
cloudless ether over-canopies them, and they 
laugh with light shed largely round. Nature 
too supplies all their wants, and nothing ever 
impairs their peace of mind.” But the vivid 
contrast between this luxurious state of dolce 
far niente and the troubles, toils, and conflicts 
of human life, is added by Tennyson, and gives 
a new significance to the passage. 

We come now to Tennyson’s use of the raw 
material lying close at hand, as yet untouched 
by the shaping spirit of literature, — newspaper 
stories, speeches, tales of the country-side, 
legends and phrases passing from lip to lip, 
50 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

suggestions from conversations and letters. He 
was quick to see the value of things that came 
to him in this way, and at the same time, as a 
rule, most clear in his discrimination between 
that which was merely interesting or striking, 
and that which was available for the purposes 
of poetry, and more particularly of such poetry 
as he could write. He did not often make 
Wordsworth’s mistake of choosing themes in 
themselves trivial like “ Alice Fell,” or “Goody 
Blake,” or themes involving an incongruous 
and ridiculous element, like “Peter Bell” or 
“The Idiot Boy.” If the subject was one that 
had a humourous aspect, he gave play to his 
sense of humour in treating it. If it was serious, 
he handled it in a tragic or in a pathetic way, 
according to the depth of feeling which it nat- 
urally involved. Illustrations of these different 
methods may easily be found among his poems. 

The “Northern Farmer (Old Style)” was 
suggested by a story which his great-uncle told 
him about a Lincolnshire farm-bailiff who said, 
when he was dying, “God A’mighty little knows 
what He’s aboot, a-takin’ me, an’ ’Squire ’ll 
be so mad an’ all !” From this saying, Tenny- 
son declares, he conjectured the whole man, 
depicted as he is with healthy vigour and kindly 
humour. It was the remark of a rich neigh- 
51 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


bour, “When I canters my ’erse along the Tam- 
per I ’ears proputty , proputty , proputty” that 
suggested the contrasting character-piece, the 
“Northern Farmer (New Style).” The poem 
called “The Church-Warden and the Curate” 
was made out of a story told to the poet by the 
Rev. H. D. Rawnsley.* “The Grandmother” 
was suggested in a letter from Benjamin Jowett 
giving the saying of an old lady, “The spirits 
of my children always seem to hover about 
me.” “The Northern Cobbler” was founded 
on a true story which Tennyson heard in his 
youth. “Owd Roa” was the poet’s version of 
a report that he had read in a newspaper about 
a black retriever which saved a child from a 
burning house. To the end of his life he kept 
his familiarity with the Lincolnshire variety of 
English, and delighted to read aloud his verses 
written in that racy and resonant dialect, which 
is now, unfortunately, rapidly disappearing in 
the dull march of improvement. 

Turning from these genre-pieces , we find 
two of his most powerful ballads, one intensely 
tragic, the other irresistibly pathetic, based 
upon incidents related in contemporary period- 
icals. In a penny magazine, called Old Brighton , 

* Memories of the Tennysons, by H. D. Rawnsley. MacLehose, Glas- 
gow, 1900, pp. 113 Jf. 


52 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

he read a story of a young man named Rooke 
who was hanged in chains for robbing the mail, 
near the close of the eighteenth century. 
“When the elements had caused the clothes 
and flesh to decay, his aged mother, night after 
night, in all weathers, and the more tempestuous 
the weather the more frequent the visits, made 
a sacred pilgrimage to the lonely spot on the 
Downs, and it was noticed that on her return 
she always brought something away with her 
in her apron. Upon being watched, it was dis- 
covered that the bones of the hanging man 
were the objects of her search, and as the wind 
and rain scattered them on the ground she con- 
veyed them to her home. There she kept them, 
and, when the gibbet was stripped of its horrid 
burden, in the dead silence of the night, she 
interred them in the hallowed enclosure of Old 
Shoreham Churchyard.” This is the tale. 
Imagine what Byron would have made of it; 
or Shelley, if we may judge by the gruesome 
details of the second part of “The Sensitive 
Plant.” But Tennyson goes straight to the 
heart of the passion of motherhood, surviving 
shame and sorrow, conquering fear and weak- 
ness in that withered mother’s breast. She 
tells her story in a dramatic lyric, a naked song 
of tragedy, a solitary, trembling war-cry of 
53 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


indomitable love. Against this second Rizpah, 
greater in her heroism than even the Hebrew 
mother whose deeds are told in the Book of 
Samuel, all the forces of law and church and 
society are arrayed. But she will not be balked 
of her human rights. She will hope that some- 
where there is mercy for her boy. She will 
gather his bones from shame and lay them to 
rest in consecrated ground. 

Flesh of my flesh was gone , hut hone of my hone was left — 
1 stole them all from the lawyers — and you , will you call 
it a theft ? 

My hahy, the hones that had suck'd me, the hones that had 
laugh'd and had cried - 

Theirs? 0 no! They are mine — not theirs — they had 
moved in my side. 

“In the Children’s Hospital” is a poem as 
tender as “Rizpah” is passionate. The story 
was told to Tennyson by Miss Mary Gladstone. 
An outline of it was printed in a parochial maga- 
zine under the title “Alice’s Christmas Day.” 
The theme is the faith and courage of a child 
in the presence of pain and death. That the 
poet at seventy years of age should be able to 
enter so simply, so sincerely, so profoundly 
into the sweet secret of a suffering child’s heart, 
is a marvellous thing. After all, there must 
be something moral and spiritual in true poetic 
54 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

genius. It is not mere intellectual power. It 
is temperament, it is sympathy, it is that power 
to put oneself in another’s place, which lies so 
close to the root of the Golden Rule. 

IV 

Tennyson’s revision of his text 
Vos , o 

Pompilius sanguis , carmen reprehendite , quod non 
Multa dies et multa litura coercuit f atque 
Perfectum decies non castigavit ad unguem. 

Horace: De Arte Poetica, 291-294. 

The changes which a poet makes, from time 
to time, in the text of his poems may be taken 
in part as a measure of his power of self-criticism, 
and in part as a record of the growth of his mind. 
It is true, of course, that a man may prefer to 
put his new ideas altogether into new poems 
and leave the old ones untouched; true also 
that the creative impulse may be so much 
stronger than the critical as to make him im- 
patient of the limce labor et mora . This was 
the case with Robert Browning. There was 
a time when he made a point of turning out a 
poem every day. When reproached for his in- 
difference to form, he said that "the world 
must take him as it found him.’ 

55 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


But Tennyson was a constant, careful cor- 
rector of his own verse. He held that “an artist 
should get his workmanship as good as he can, 
and make his work as perfect as possible. A 
small vessel, built on fine lines, is likely to float 
further down the stream of time than a big 
raft.” He was keenly sensitive to the subtle 
effects of rhythm, the associations of words, 
the beauty of form. The deepening of thought 
and feeling which came to him with the experi- 
ence of life did not make him indifferent to 
the technics of his craft as a poet. Indeed it 
seemed to intensify his desire for perfection. 
The more he had to say the more carefully he 
wished to say it. 

The first and most important revision of his 
work began in the period of his greatest spir- 
itual and intellectual growth, immediately after 
the death of his friend Hallam. The results of 
it were seen in the early poems, republished in 
the two volumes of 1842. From this time for- 
ward there were many changes in the succes- 
sive editions of his poems. The Princess , pub- 
lished in 1847, was slightly altered in 1848, 
thoroughly revised in 1850 (when the inter- 
calary songs were added), and considerably 
enlarged in 1851. The “Ode on the Death of 
the Duke of Wellington,” printed as a pam- 
56 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


phlet in 1852, was immediately revised in 1853, 
and again much altered when it appeared in 
the same volume with Maud in 1855. As late 
as August 1892, I heard Tennyson questioning 
whether the line describing the cross of St. 
Paul’s — 

That shines over city and river — 
should be changed to read, 

That shines upon city and river. 

There were general revisions in 1872 (The 
Library Edition), in 1874 (The Cabinet Edi- 
tion), in 1884 (The Globe Edition), in 1886 
(A New Library Edition, in ten volumes), in 
1889, and in 1891. The complete single- volume 
edition, “with last alterations,” was published 
in 1894. 

In Memoriam received less revision after its 
first publication than any other of Tennyson’s 
larger poems;* probably because it had been 
so frequently worked over in manuscript. Six- 
teen years passed between its inception and its 
appearance in print. 

I propose to examine some of Tennyson’s 
changes in his text in order that we may do 
what none of the critics have yet done, — get a 

* Joseph Jacobs, Tennyson , and In Memoriam , notes sixty-two verbal 
changes. Two sections (xxxix, lix) have been added to the poem. 

57 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


clear idea of their general character and the 
particular reasons why he made them. These 
changes may be classified under five heads, de- 
scriptive of the different reasons for revision. 

1. For simplicity and naturalness . — There was 
a tincture of archaism in the early diction of 
Tennyson, an occasional use of far-fetched 
words, an unfamiliar way of spelling, a general 
flavour of conscious exquisiteness, which seemed 
to his maturer judgment to savour of affectation. 
These blemishes, due to the predominance of the 
aesthetic impulse, he was careful to remove. 

At first, he tells us, he had “an absurd an- 
tipathy ” to the use of the hyphen; and in 1830 
and 1832 he wrote, in “Mariana,” flowerplots , 
casementcurtain, marishmosses , silver green; and in 
“The Palace of Art,” pleasurehouse , sunnywarm , 
torrentbow , clearwalled. In 1842 the despised 
hyphen was restored to its place, and the com- 
pound words were spelled according to common 
usage. He discarded also his early fashion of 
accenting the ed in the past participle, — wreathed , 
blenched , gleaned , etc. 

Archaic elisions, like “throne o’ the massive 
ore” in “Recollections of the Arabian Nights” 
(Z. 146), and “up an’ away” in “Mariana” 
(Z. 50), and “whither away wi’ the singing sail” 
in “The Sea-Fairies,” disappeared. 

58 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

A purified and chastened taste made him 
prefer, in the “Ode to Memory,” 


With plaited alleys of the trailing rose — [ 1842 ] 

to 

With pleached alleys of the trailing rose. [ 1830 ] 

In “The Lady of Shalott” he left out 

A pearlgarland winds her head: 

She leaneth on a velvet bed. 

Full royally apparelled. 

In “Mariana” he substituted 

The day 

Was sloping toward his western bower , [1842] 

for 

The day 

Downsloped was westering in his bower. [ 1830 ] 


The general result of such alterations as these 
was to make the poems more simple and straight- 
forward. In the same way we feel that there is 
great gain in the omission of the stanzas about 
a balloon which were originally prefixed to “A 
Dream of Fair Women,” and of the elaborate 
architectural and decorative details which over- 
loaded the first version of “The Palace of Art,” 
and in the compression of the last strophe of 
“The Lotos-Eaters,” with its curious pictures 
of “the tusked seahorse wallowing in a stripe 
59 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


of grassgreen calm/’ and “the monstrous nar- 
whale swallowing his own foamfountains in 
the sea.” We can well spare these marine 
prodigies for the sake of such a line as 

Roll'd to starboard , roll'd to larboard , when the surge was 
seething free. [ 1842 ] 

2. For melody and smoothness . — It was a con- 
stant wish of Tennyson to make his verse easy 
to read, as musical as possible, except when 
the sense required a rough or broken rhythm. 
He had a strong aversion to the hissing sound 
of the letter s when it comes at the end of a 
word and at the beginning of the next word. 
He was always trying to get rid of this, — “kick- 
ing the geese out of the boat,” as he called it, — 
and he thought that he had succeeded. {Memoir, 
II, p. 14.) But this, of course, was a “flattering 
unction.” It is not difficult to find instances of 
the double sibilant remaining in his verse: 
for example, in “A Dream of Fair Women” 
(Z. 241):— 

She lock'd her lips: she left me where I stood, 

and “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” 
(Z. 23):— 

She seem'd a part of joyous Spring. 

But for the most part he was careful to remove 
it, as in the following cases. 

60 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

“ The Lady of Shalott” ( Z . 156): — 

A pale , pale corpse she floated by. [1833] 
A gleaming shape she floated by. [1842] 

“Mariana in the South” ( 11 . 9-10): — 

Down in the dry salt-marshes stood 

That house darklatticed. [Omitted, 1842] 

“Locksley Hall” (Z. 182):— 

Let the peoples spin for ever down the ringing grooves of 
change. [1842] 

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves 
of change. [1845] 

Alterations were made in order to get rid of 
unpleasant assonance in blank verse, as in 
“CEnone” (Z. 19):— 

She, leaning on a vine-entwined stone. [1833] 

She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine. [1842] 

Disagreeable alliterations were removed, as 
in “Mariana” (Z. 43): — 

For leagues no other tree did dark. [1830] 

For leagues no other tree did mark. [1842] 

“Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton” (Z. 5):— 

When laurel-garlanded leaders fall. [1852] 

Mourning when their leaders fall. [1855] 

61 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Imperfect rhymes were corrected, as in 
“ Mariana in the South” (Z. 85): — 

One dry cicala 9 s summer song 
At night filled all the gallery , 

Backward the latticehlind she flung 

And leaned upon the balcony. [ 1833 ] 

At eve a dry cicala sung , 

There came a sound as of the sea. 

Backward the lattice-blind she flung. 

And lean 9 d upon the balcony. [ 1842 ] 

Incongruous and harsh expressions were re- 
moved, as in “The Poet” (Z. 45): — 

And in the bordure of her robe was writ 
Wisdom, a name to shake 
Hoar anarchies, as with a thunderfit. [ 1830 ] 

And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame 
Wisdom, a name to shake 
All evil dreams of power — a sacred name. [ 1842 ] 

Two very delicate and perfect examples of 
the same kind of improvement are found in 


the revision of “Claribel” (Z. 11): — 


At noon the bee low-hummeth. 

[ 1830 ] 

At noon the wild bee hummeth. 

[ 1842 ] 

And (Z. 17):— 


The fledgling throstle lispeth. 

[ 1830 ] 

The callow throstle lispeth. 

[ 1842 ] 


62 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Some of the alterations in the Wellington Ode 
are very happy. Line 79 originally read, 

And ever-ringing avenues of song. 

How much more musical is the present ver- 
sion : — 

And ever-echoing avenues of song! 

In line 133, “ world’s earthquake” was changed 
to “ world-earthquake.” Line 267, — 

Husky the Dead March sounds in the people's ears , — 

[ 1853 ] 

was wonderfully deepened in 1855, when it was 
altered to 

Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears. 

3. For clearness of thought . — The most familiar 
instance of this kind of revision is in “ A Dream 
of Fair Women.” In 1833 the stanza describ- 
ing the sacrifice of Iphigenia ended with the 
lines 

One drew a sharp knife thro ' my tender throat 
Slowly y — and nothing more. 

A critic very properly inquired “ what more she 
would have.” The lines were changed to 

The bright death quiver'd at the victim's throat; 
Touch'd; and I knew no more. 

A few more illustrations will suffice to show 
how careful he was to make his meaning clear. 
63 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


“Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton” ( Z . 157):— 

Of most unbounded reverence and regret . [ 1852 ] 

But it is hard to see how anything can be more 
or less unbounded; so the line was changed: — 
Of boundless reverence and regret . [ 1853 ] 

Of boundless love and reverence and regret. [ 1855 ] 

“The Marriage of Geraint” (Z. 70): — 

They sleeping each by other. [ 1859 ] 

They sleeping each by either. [ 1874 ] 

“Lancelot and Elaine” (Z. 45): — 

And one of these , the king, had on a crown. [ 1859 ] 
And he that once was king had on a crown. [ 1874 ] 
Line 168: — 

Thither he made , and wound the gateway horn . [ 1859 ] 
Thither he made , and blew the gateway horn. [ 1874 ] 
Line 1147: — 

Steer’d by the dumb , went upward with the flood. [ 1859 ] 
Oar’d by the dumb , went upward with the flood. [ 1874 ] 
“Guinevere” (Z. 470): — 

To honour his own word as if his God's : 

this line was not in the 1859 version. It en- 
hances the solemnity of the oath of initiation 
into the Round Table. 


64 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


“The Passing of Arthur” (//. 462-469): — 

Thereat once more he moved about , and clomb 
Ev’n to the highest he could climb , and saw , 
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand , 

Or thought he saw , the speck that bare the King, 
Down that long water opening on the deep 
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go 
From less to less and vanish into light . 

And the new sun rose bringing the new year . 

These lines, with others, were added to “Morte 
d’Arthur,” the original form of this idyl, in 
order to bring out the distant gleam of hope 
which is thrown upon the close of the epic by 
the vision of Arthur’s immortality and the 
prophecy of his return. 

4. For truth in the description of nature . — The 
alterations made for this reason are very many. 
I give a few examples. 

“The Lotos-Eaters” (Z. 7): — 

Above the valley burned the golden moon. [ 1833 ] 

But in the afternoon (Z. 3) the moon is of palest 
silver; so the line was revised thus: — 

Full-faced above the valley stood the moon. [ 1842 ] 
Line 16 originally read. 

Three thundercloven thrones of oldest snow. [ 1833 ] 

But, in the first place, it is the lightning, not 
the thunder, that cleaves the mountains; and, 
65 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


in the second place, a snow-peak, if struck by 
lightning, would not remain “cloven” very 
long, but would soon be covered with snow 
again. For these reasons, quite as much as 
for the sake of preserving the quiet and dreamy 
tone of Lotos-land, Tennyson changed the line 
to 

Three silent pinnacles of aged snow. [1842] 

In “Locksley Hall” (Z. 3), the first reading 
was 

y T is the place , and round the gables, as of old y the cur- 
lews call. [1842] 

But the curlews do not fly close to the roofs 
of houses, as the swallows do; so the line was 
changed to 

*T is the place , and all around it , as of old , the curlews call. 

[1845] 

“Mariana” ill. 3-4): — 

The rusted nails fell from the knots 
That held the peach to the gardenwall. [1830] 

This was not quite characteristic of a Lincoln- 
shire garden; so it was altered, in 1863 and 
1872, to the present form: — 

That held the pear to the gable-wall. 

“The Poet’s Song” (Z. 9): — 

The swallow stopped as he hunted the bee. [1842] 
66 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


But swallows do not hunt bees; so the line was 
changed to 

The swallow stopt as he hunted the fly. [1884] 
“Lancelot and Elaine” (ll. 652-653): — 

No surer than our falcon yesterday , 

Who lost the hern we slipt him at. [1859] 

But the female falcon, being larger and fiercer, 
is the one usually employed in the chase; so 
him was changed to her. 

There is a very interesting addition to In Me - 
moriam, which bears witness to Tennyson’s scru- 
pulous desire to be truthful in natural descrip- 
tion. Section ii is addressed to an old Yew-tree 
in the graveyard, and contains this stanza: — 

0 not for thee the glow , the bloom , 

Who changest not in any gale , 

Nor branding summer suns avail 
To touch thy thousand years of gloom. 

But, as a matter of fact, the yew has its season 
of bloom; and so in Section xxxix, added in 
1871, we find these lines: — 

To thee too comes the golden hour 
When flower is feeling after flower; 

But Sorrow —fixt upon the dead , 

And darkening the dark graves of men , — 

What whisper'd from her lying lips f 
Thy gloom is kindled at the tips, 

And passes into gloom again. 

67 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


5. For deeper meaning and human interest . — 
In this respect the revision of “The Palace of 
Art” is most important. The stanzas added in 
the later editions of this poem have the effect 
of intensifying its significance, making the sin 
of self-centred isolation stand out sharply (11. 
197-204), displaying the scornful contempt of 
the proud soul for common humanity (ll. 145- 
160), and throwing over the picture the Phari- 
see’s robe of moral self-complacency (ll. 205- 
208). The introduction in 1833 began as fol- 
lows: — 

I send you , friend , a sort of allegory , 

( You are an artist and will understand 
Its many lesser meanings.) 

But in 1842 the lines read 

I send you here a sort of allegory , 

( For you will understand it.) 

The poet no longer addresses his work to an 
artist: he speaks more broadly to man as man. 
For the same reason he omits a great many of 
the purely decorative stanzas, and concentrates 
the attention on the spiritual drama. 

The addition of the Conclusion to “The May 
Queen” (1842) is another instance of Tenny- 
son’s enrichment of his work with warmer hu- 
man interest. In the first two parts there is 
68 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


nothing quite so intimate in knowledge of the 
heart as the lines 

0 look! the sun begins to rise , the heavens are in a glow; 
He shines upon a hundred fields , and all of them I know. 

There is nothing quite so true to the simplicity 
of childlike faith as the closing verses: — 

To lie within the light of God , as I lie upon your breast — 
And the wicked cease from troubling , and the weary are at 
rest . 

The sixth strophe of the Choric Song in “The 
Lotos-Eaters,” beginning 

Dear is the memory of our wedded lives. 

And dear the last embraces of our wives 
And their warm tears , — 

was added in 1842. 

In the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of 
Wellington,” lines 266-270 were added after 
the first edition: — 

On God and Godlike men we build our trust . 

Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears: 

The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears: 
The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears; 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . 

This passage brings a deep note of natural emo- 
tion into the poem. The physical effect of the 
69 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


actual interment, the sight of the yawning grave, 
the rattle of the handful of earth thrown upon 
the coffin, are vividly expressed. 

A noteworthy change for the sake of express- 
ing a deeper human feeling occurs in “The 
Lady of Shalott.” The original form of the 
last stanza was merely picturesque : it described 
the wonder and perplexity of “the wellfed wits 
at Camelot” when they looked upon the dead 
maiden in her funeral barge and read the parch- 
ment on her breast: — 

“ The web was woven curiously, 

The charm is broken utterly , 

Draw near and fear not — this is I, 

The Lady of Shalott .” [ 1833 ] 

But the revised version makes them “cross 
themselves for fear/’ and brings the knight 
for secret love of whom the maiden died to 
look upon her face: — 

But Lancelot mused a little space: 

He said , 6 She has a lovely face ; 

God in his mercy lend her grace , 

The Lady of Shalott. 9 

The addition of the songs to The Princess 
(1850) must be regarded as evidence of a desire 
to deepen the meaning of the story. Tennyson 
said distinctly that he wished to make people 
70 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


see that the child was the heroine of the poem. 
The songs are a great help in this direction. 
In the Idylls of the King Tennyson took pains, 
as he went on with the series, to eliminate all 
traces of the old tradition which made Modred 
the son of King Arthur and his half-sister Bel- 
licent, thus sweeping away the taint of incest 
from the story, and revealing the catastrophe 
as the result of the unlawful love of Lancelot 
and Guinevere. He introduced many allegorical 
details into the later Idylls. And he endeavoured 
to enhance the epic dignity and significance of 
the series by inserting the closing passages of 
“The Coming of Arthur” and “The Passing 
of Arthur,” which present clearly the idea of 
a great kingdom rising under Arthur’s leader- 
ship and falling into ruin with his defeat. 

A general study of the changes which Tenny- 
son made in the text of his poems will show, 
beyond a doubt, not only that he was sensitive 
to the imperfections in his work and ready to 
profit, at least to a certain extent, by the sug- 
gestions of critics; but also that his skill as 
an artist was refined by use, and that his 
thoughts of life and his sympathies with man- 
kind deepened and broadened with advancing 
years. Thus there was a compensation for the 
71 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

loss of something of the delicate, inimitable 
freshness, the novel and enchanting charm, 
which breathed from the lyrics of his youth. 

v 

THE QUALITIES OF TENNYSON’S POETRY 

“His music was the south-wind's sigh , 

His lamp , the maiden's downcast eye , 

And ever the spell of beauty came 
And turned the drowsy world to flame. 

By lake and stream and gleaming hall 
And modest copse and the forest tall , 

Where'er he went , the magic guide 
Kept its place by the poet's side. 

Said melted the days like cups of pearl , 

Served high and low , the lord and the churl , 

Loved harebells nodding on a rock , 

A cabin hung with curling smoke , 

Ring of axe or hum of wheel 
Or gleam which use can paint on steel , 

And huts and tents; nor loved he less 
Stately lords in palaces , 

Princely women hard to please , 

Fenced by form and ceremony , 

Decked by rites and courtly dress 
And etiquette of gentilesse. 

• • • • . 

He came to the green ocean's brim 
And saw the wheeling sea-birds skim , 

Summer and winter , o'er the wave 
Like creatures of a skiey mould 

72 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Impassible to heat or cold. 

He stood before the tumbling main 
With joy too tense for sober brain; 

And he , the bard , a crystal soul 
Sphered and concentric with the whole” 

Emerson: The Poetic Gift. 

If an unpublished poem by Tennyson — say 
an idyl of chivalry, a classical character-piece, 
a modern dramatic lyric, or even a little song 
— were discovered, and given out without his 
name, it would be easy, provided it belonged 
to his best work, to recognise it as his. But it 
is by no means easy to define just what it is 
that makes his poetry recognisable. It is not 
the predominance of a single trait or character- 
istic. If that were the case, it would be a simple 
matter to put one’s finger upon the hall-mark. 
It is not a fixed and exaggerated mannerism. 
That is the sign of the Tennysonians, rather 
than of their master. His style varies from 
the luxuriance of “A Dream of Fair Women” 
to the simplicity of “The Oak,” from the light- 
ness of “The Brook” to the stateliness of 
“Guinevere.” There is as much difference of 
manner between “The Gardener’s Daughter” 
and “Ulysses,” as there is between Words- 
worth’s “Solitary Reaper” and his “Dion.” 

73 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


The most remarkable thing about Tenny- 
son’s poetry as a whole is that it expresses so 
fully and so variously the qualities of a many- 
sided and well-balanced nature. But when we 
look at the poems separately we see that, in 
almost every case, the quality which is most 
closely related to the subject of the poem plays 
the leading part in giving it colour and form. 
There is a singular fitness, a harmonious charm 
in his work, not unlike that which distinguishes 
the painting of Titian. It is not, indeed, alto- 
gether spontaneous and unstudied. It has the 
effect of choice, of fine selection. But it is in- 
evitable enough in its way. The choice being 
made, it would be hard to better it. The words 
are the right words, and each stands in its right 
place. 

The one thing that cannot justly be said of 
it, it seems to me, is precisely what Tennyson 
says in a certain place: — 

I do but sing because I must , 

And pipe but as the linnets sing. 

That often seems true of Burns and Shelley, 
and sometimes of Keats. But it is not true of 
Spenser, or Milton, or Gray, or Tennyson. 
They do not pour forth their song 

“In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 9 * 

74 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


I shall endeavour in the remaining pages of 
this chapter to describe and illustrate some of 
the qualities which are found in Tennyson’s 
poetry. 

1. His diction is lucid, suggestive, melodious. 
He avoids, for the most part, harsh and strident 
words, intricate constructions, strange rhymes, 
startling contrasts. He chooses expressions 
which have a natural rhythm, an easy flow, a 
clear meaning. He has a rare mastery of metri- 
cal resources. Many of his lyrics seem to be 
composed to a musical cadence which his in- 
ward ear has caught in some happy phrase. 

He prefers to use those metrical forms which 
are free and fluent, and in which there is room 
for subtle modulations and changes. In the 
stricter modes of verse he is less happy. The 
sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, the heroic coup- 
let, the swift couplet (octosyllabic), — these he 
seldom uses, and little of his best work is done 
in these forms. Even in four-stress iambic 
triplets, the metre in which “Two Voices” is 
written, he seems constrained and awkward. 
He is at his best in the long swinging lines of 
“Locksley Hall” (eight-stress trochaic couplets) ; 
or in a free blank verse (five-stress iambic), 
which admits all the Miltonic liberty of shifted 
and hovering accents, grace-notes, omitted 
75 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


stresses, and the like; or in mixed measures 
like “The Revenge” and the Wellington Ode, 
where the rhythm is now iambic and now tro- 
chaic; or in metres which he invented, like 
“The Daisy,” or revived, like “In Memoriam”; 
or in little songs like “Break, break, break” 
and “The Bugle-Song,” where the melody is 
as unmistakable and as indefinable as the feel- 
ing. 

He said, “Englishmen will spoil English 
verses by scanning them when they are read- 
ing, and they confound accent with quantity.” 
“In a blank verse you can have from three up 
to eight beats; but, if you vary the beats un- 
usually, your ordinary newspaper critic sets 
up a howl.” {Memoir, II, 12, 14.) He liked 
the “run-on” from line to line, the overflow 
from stanza to stanza. Much of his verse is 
impossible to analyse if you insist on looking 
for regular feet according to the classic models; 
but if you read it according to the principle 
which Coleridge explained in the preface to 
“Christabel,” by “counting the accents, not 
the syllables,” you will find that it falls into a 
natural rhythm. It seems as if his own way 
of reading it aloud in a sort of chant were al- 
most inevitable. 

This close relation of his verse to music may 
76 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


be felt in Maud , and in his perfect little lyrics 
like the autumnal “Song,” “The Throstle,” 
“Tears, idle tears,” “Sweet and low,” and 
“Far — far — away.” Here also we see the power 
of suggestiveness, the atmospheric effect, in 
his diction. Every word is in harmony with 
the central emotion of the song, vague, delicate, 
intimate, mingled of sweetness and sadness. 

The most beautiful illustration of this is 
“Crossing the Bar.” Notice how the metre, in 
each stanza, rises to the long third line, and 
sinks away again in the shorter fourth line. 
The poem is in two parts; the third stanza 
corresponding, in every line, to the first; the 
fourth stanza, to the second. In each division 
of the song there is first, a clear, solemn, tran- 
quil note, — a reminder that the day is over 
and it is time to depart. The accent hovers 
over the words “sunset” and “twilight,” and 
falls distinctly on “star” and “bell.” Then 
come two thoughts of sadness, the “moaning 
of the bar,” the “sadness of farewell,” from 
which the voyager prays to be delivered. The 
answer follows in the two pictures of peace 
and joy, — the full, calm tide bearing him home- 
ward, — the vision of the unseen Pilot who has 
guided and will guide him to the end of his 
voyage. Every image in the poem is large 
77 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

and serene. Every word is simple, clear, har- 
monious. 

The movement of a very different kind of 
music — martial, sonorous, thrilling — may be 
heard in “The Charge of the Heavy Brigade.” 

Up the hilU up the hill , up the hill , 

Follow'd the Heavy Brigade , — 

reproduces with extraordinary force the breath- 
less, toilsome, thundering assault. 

His verse often seems to adapt itself to his 
meaning with an almost magical effect. Thus, 
in the Wellington Ode, when the spirit of Nel- 
son welcomes the great warrior to his tomb in 
St. Paul’s, — 

Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd guest , 

With banner and with music , with soldier and with priest. 
With a nation weeping , and breaking on my rest ? — 

we can almost hear the funeral march and see 
the vast, sorrowful procession. In “Locksley 
Hall,” — 

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords 
with might; 

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music 
out of sight , — 

what value there is in the word “trembling” 
and in the slight secondary pause that follows 
it; how the primary pause in the preceding 
78 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


bar, dividing it, emphasises the word “Self.” 
In The Princess there is a line describing one 
of the curious Chinese ornaments in which a 
series of openwork balls are carved one inside 
of another: — 

Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere . 

One can almost see the balls turning and 
glistening. In the poem “To Virgil” there is 
a verse praising the great Mantuan’s lordship 
over language : — 

AU the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely 
word. 

This illustrates the very quality that it de- 
scribes. “Flowering” is the magical word. 

But it is not so often the “lonely word” that 
is wonderful in Tennyson, as it is the company 
of words which blossom together in colour-har- 
mony, the air of lucid beauty that envelops 
the many features of a landscape and blends 
them in a perfect picture. This is his peculiar 
charm; and it is illustrated in many passages, 
but nowhere better than in In Memoriam y 
lxxxvi, — 

Sweet after showers , ambrosial air y 

That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 
And meadow , — 


79 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


and in the perfect description of autumn’s sad 
tranquillity, Section xi, — 

Calm on the seas y and silver sleep , 

And waves that sway themselves in rest , 

And dead calm in that noble breast 
Which heaves but with the heaving deep. 

2. Tennyson’s closeness of observation, fidel- 
ity of description, and felicity of expression in 
nature-poetry have often been praised. In 
spite of his near-sightedness he saw things with 
great clearness and accuracy. All his senses 
seem to have been alert and true. In this re- 
spect he was better fitted to be an observer 
than Wordsworth, in whom the colour-sense 
was not especially vivid, and whose poetry 
shows little or no evidence of the sense of fra- 
grance, although his ears caught sounds with 
wonderful fineness and his eyes were quick to 
note forms and movements. Bayard Taylor 
once took a walk with Tennyson in the Isle of 
Wight, and afterwards wrote: “During the 
conversation with which we beguiled the way 
I was struck with the variety of his knowledge. 
Not a little flower on the downs, which the 
sheep had spared, escaped his notice, and the 
geology of the coast, both terrestrial and sub- 
marine, was perfectly familiar to him. I re- 
membered the remark I once heard from the 
80 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


lips of a distinguished English author [Thack- 
eray], that 4 Tennyson was the wisest man he 
knew, 5 and could well believe that he was sin- 
cere in making it.” 

But Tennyson’s relation to nature differed 
from Wordsworth’s in another respect than 
that which has been mentioned, and one in 
which the advantage lies with the earlier poet. 
Wordsworth had a personal intimacy with na- 
ture, a confiding and rejoicing faith in her unity, 
her life, and her deep beneficence, which made 
him able to say: — 

“ This prayer I make , 

Knowing that Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her : 9 t is her privilege , 

Through all the years of this our life , to lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues. 

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men , 

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life. 

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings .” 

There is no utterance like this in Tennyson’s 
poetry. He had not a profound and permanent 
sense of that “something far more deeply inter- 
81 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

fused” in nature which gives her a consoling, 
liberating, nourishing power, — a maternal power. 
In “Enoch Arden” the solitude of nature, even 
in her richest beauty, is terrible. In “Locks- 
ley Hall” the disappointed lover calls not on 
Mother-Nature, but on his 44 Mother- Age,” the 
age of progress, of advancing knowledge, to 
comfort and help him. In “ Maud ” the unhappy 
hero says, not that he will turn to nature, 
but that he will 4 bury himself in his books.’ 
Whether it was because Tennyson saw the 
harsher, sterner aspects of nature more clearly 
than Wordsworth did, or because he had more 
scientific knowledge, or because he was less 
simple and serene, it remains true that he did 
not have that steady and glad confidence in 
her vital relation to the spirit of man, that 
overpowering joy in surrender to her purifying 
and moulding influence, which Wordsworth ex- 
pressed in the 4 4 Lines composed a few miles 
above Tintern Abbey,” in 1798, and in “De- 
votional Incitements” in 1832, and in many 
other poems written between these dates. Yet 
it must be observed that Wordsworth himself, 
in later life, felt some abatement of his unques- 
tioning and all-sufficing faith in nature, or at 
least admitted the need of something beside 
her ministry to satisfy all the wants of the hu- 
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THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


man spirit. For in “An Evening Voluntary ” 
(1834), he writes: — 

“By grace divine. 

Not otherwise, 0 Nature! are we thine” 

Mr. Stopford Brooke has observed that the 
poetry of both Scott and Byron contains many 
utterances of delight in the wild and solitary 
aspects of nature, and that we find little or 
nothing of this kind in Tennyson. From this 
Mr. Brooke infers that he had less real love of 
nature for her own sake than the two poets 
named. The inference is not well grounded. 

Both Scott and Byron were very dependent 
upon social pleasure for their enjoyment of 
life, — much more so than Tennyson. Any one 
who will read Byron’s letters may judge how 
far his professed passion for the solitudes of 
the ocean and the Alps was sincere, and how 
far it was a pose. Indeed, in one place, if I 
mistake not, he maintains the theory that it is 
the presence of man’s work — the ship on the 
ocean, the city among the hills — that lends 
the chief charm to nature. 

Tennyson was one of the few great poets 
who have proved their love of nature by living 
happily in the country. From boyhood up he 
was well content to spend long, lonely days by 
the seashore, in the woods, on the downs. It 
83 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


is true that as a rule his temperament found 
more joy in rich landscapes and gardens, than 
in the wild, the savage, the desolate. But no 
man who was not a true lover of nature for 
her own sake could have written the “Ode 
to Memory,” or this stanza from “Early 
Spring”: — 

The woods with living airs 
How softly fann’d, 

Light airs from where the deep , 

All down the sand , 

Is breathing in his sleep , 

HeaYd by the land . 

Nor is there any lack of feeling for the sublime 
in such a poem as “The Voice and the Peak”: — 

The voice and the Peak 
Far over summit and lawn , 

The lone glow and long roar 
Green-rushing from the rosy thrones of dawn 1 

It would be easy to fill many pages with illus- 
trations of Tennyson’s extraordinary vividness 
of perception and truthfulness of description 
in regard to nature. He excels, first of all, in 
delicate pre-Raphaelite work, — the painting of 
the flowers in the meadow, the buds on the 
trees, the movements of waves and streams, 
the birds at rest and on the wing. Looking at 
the water, he sees the 


84 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Little breezes dusk and shiver 
Thro 9 the wave that runs for ever 
By the island in the river 

Flowing down to Camelot. 

[The Lady of Shalott .] 

With a single touch he gives the aspect of the 
mill stream: — 

The sleepy pool above the dam , 

The pool beneath it never still. 

[The Miller's Daughter.] 

He shows us 

a shoal 

Of darting fish , that on a summer mom 

Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot 

Come slipping o’er their shadows on the sand , 

But if a man who stands upon the brink 
But lift a shining hand against the sun , 

There is not left the twinkle of a fin 
Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower. 

[Geraint and Enid. J 

He makes us see 

the waterfall 
Which ever sounds and shines , 

A pillar of white light upon the wall 
Of purple cliffs , aloof descried. [Ode to Memory .] 

He makes us hear, through the nearer voice 
of the stream. 

The drumming thunder of the huger fall 
At distance , [Geraint and Enid.] 

or 

The scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave. 

[Maud.] 


85 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Does he speak of trees ? He knows the differ- 
ence between the poplars’ 

noise of falling showers, [Elaine.] 

and 

The dry-tongued laurels 9 pattering talk, [Maud.] 

and the voice of the cedar, 

sighing for Lebanon , 

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East. 

[Maud.] 

He sees how 

A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime , 

[Maud.] 

and how the chestnut-buds begin 

To spread into the perfect fan 
Above the teeming ground. 

[Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere.] 

He has watched the hunting-dog in its rest- 
less sleep, — 

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams , — 

[Locksley Hall.] 

and noted how the lonely heron, at sundown, 

forgets his melancholy , 

Lets down his other leg, and stretching dreams 
Of goodly supper in the distant pool. 

[Gareth and Lynette .] 

There is a line in “In Memoriam,” — 

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March , — 

86 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


which Tennyson meant to describe the king- 
fisher. A friend criticised it and said that some 
other bird must have been intended, because 
“the kingfisher shoots by, flashes by, but never 
flits.” But, in fact, to flit , which means “to 
move lightly and swiftly,” is precisely the word 
for the motion of this bird, as it darts along 
the stream with even wing-strokes, shifting its 
place from one post to another. Tennyson 
gives both the colour and the flight of the king- 
fisher with absolute precision. 

But it is not only in this pre-Raphaelite work 
that his extraordinary skill is shown. He has 
also the power of rendering vague, wide land- 
scapes, under the menacing shadow of a com- 
ing storm, in the calm of an autumnal morn- 
ing, or in the golden light of sunset. Almost 
always such landscapes are coloured by the 
prevailing emotion or sentiment of the poem. 
Tennyson holds with Coleridge that much of 
what we see in nature is the reflection of our 
own life, our inmost feelings: — 

“Ours is her wedding -garment , ours her shroud” 

In “The Gardener’s Daughter,” Tennyson de- 
scribes the wedding-garment: — 

All the land in flowery squares , 

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind , 

S melt of the coming summer , as one large cloud 

87 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Drew downward; but all else of heaven was pure 
Up to the sun , and May from verge to verge, 

And May with me from head to heel . 

But in “Guinevere/’ it is the shroud:— 

For all abroad , 

Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full , 

The white mist , like a face-cloth to the face , 

Clung to the dead earth , and the land was still . 

3. The wide range of human sympathy in 
Tennyson’s work is most remarkable. The 
symbolic poem, “Merlin and the Gleam,” de- 
scribes his poetic life. Following the Gleam, — 
“the higher poetic imagination,” — he passes 
from fairy-land into the real world and inter- 
prets the characters and conflicts, the labours 
and longings, of all sorts and conditions of men. 
He speaks for childhood in “The May Queen” 
and “In the Children’s Hospital”; for mother- 
hood in “Rizpah” and “Demeter”; for sea- 
men in “The Revenge” and “Columbus” and 
“The Voyage of Maeldune” and “Enoch Ar- 
den”; for soldiers in “The Charge of the Light 
Brigade” and “The Charge of the Heavy Bri- 
gade” and “The Defence of Lucknow”; for 
philosophers in “Lucretius” and “The Ancient 
Sage”; for the half-crazed ascetic in “St. Simeon 
Stylites,” and for the fearless reformer in “Sir 
John Oldcastle”; for the painter in “Romney’s 
88 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Remorse”; for the rustic in the “ Northern 
Farmer”; for religious enthusiasm, active, in 
“Sir Galahad,” and passive, in “St. Agnes’ 
Eve”; for peasant life in “Dora,” and for 
princely life in “The Day Dream”; for lovers 
of different types in “Maud,” and “Locksley 
Hall,” and “Aylmer’s Field,” and “Love and 
Duty,” and “Happy,” and “(Enone,” and 
“The Lover’s Tale,” and “Lady Clare.” 

He is not as deep, as inward, as searching 
as Wordsworth is in some of his peasant por- 
traits. There is a revealing touch in “Michael,” 
in “Margaret,” in “Resolution and Indepen- 
dence,” to which Tennyson rarely, if ever, at- 
tains. Nor is there as much individuality and 
intensity in his pictures as we find in the best 
of Browning’s dramatis persona, like “Saul” 
and “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” and “Andrea del Sar- 
to,” and “The Flight of the Duchess.” Tenny- 
son brings out in his characters that which is 
most natural and normal. He does not delight, 
as Browning does, in discovering the strange, 
the eccentric. Nor has he Browning’s extraor- 
dinary acquaintance with the technical details 
of different arts and trades, and with the sin- 
gular features of certain epochs of history, like 
the Renaissance. 

But, on the other hand, if Tennyson has less 
89 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


intellectual curiosity in his work, he has more 
emotional sympathy. His characters are con- 
ceived on broader lines; they are more human 
and typical. Even when he finds his subject in 
some classic myth, it is the human element that 
he brings out. This is the thing that moves 
him. He studies the scene, the period, care- 
fully and closely in order to get the atmosphere 
of time and place. But these are subordinate. 
The main interest, for him, lies in the living 
person into whose place he puts himself and 
with whose voice he speaks. Thus in “Ti- 
thonus” he dwells on the loneliness of one who 
must “vary from the kindly race of men” since 
the gift of “cruel immortality” has been con- 
ferred upon him. In “Demeter and Perseph- 
one” the most beautiful passage is that in which 
the goddess-mother tells of her yearning for her 
lost child. 

4. Tennyson’s work is marked by frequent 
reference to the scientific discoveries and social 
movements of his age. Wordsworth’s prophetic 
vision of the time “when the discoveries of 
the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist, will 
be as proper objects of the poet’s art as any 
upon which it can be employed,” because these 
things and the relations under which they are 
contemplated will be so familiarised that we 
90 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


shall see that they are “ parts of our life as en- 
joying and suffering beings,” — this prediction 
of the advent of science, transfigured by poetry, 
as “a dear and genuine inmate of the household 
of man,” was fulfilled, at least in part, in the 
poetry of Tennyson. 

In “The Two Voices” Tennyson alludes to 
modern osteology: — 

Before the little ducts began 

To feed thy bones with lime, and ran 

Their course, till thou wert also man. 

In the twenty-first section of In Memoriam 
he probably alludes to the discovery of the 
satellite of Neptune: — 

* When Science reaches forth her arms 
To feel from world to world, and charms 
Her secret from the latest moon ' 

In the twenty-fourth section he speaks of sun- 
spots: — 

The very source and fount of Day 
Is dash'd with wandering isles of night . 

In the thirty-fifth section he alludes to the 
process of denudation: — 

The sound of streams that swift or slow 

Draw down Monian hills, and sow 
The dust of continents to be. 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


The nebular hypothesis of Laplace and the 
theory of evolution are conceived and expressed 
with wonderful imaginative power in the one 
hundred and eighteenth section. In the fourth 
section a subtle fact of physical science is trans- 
lated into an image of poetic beauty: — 

Break , thou deep vase of chilling tears , 

That grief hath shaken into frost l 

“Locksley Hall” is full of echoes of the scien- 
tific inventions and the social hopes of the 
mid-century. In “Locksley Hall, Sixty Years 
After” the old man speaks, with disenchanted 
spirit, of the failure of many of these hopes 
and the small value of many of these inven- 
tions, but he still holds to the vision of human 
progress guided by a divine, unseen Power: — 

When the schemes and all the systems , Kingdoms and Re- 
publics fall , 

Something kindlier , higher , holier , — all for each and each 
for all? 

All the full-brainy half-brain races , led by Justice , Love, 
and Truth ; 

All the millions one at length with all the visions of my 
youth ? 


Earth at last a warless world y a single race , a single 
tongue — 

l have seen her far away— for is not Earth as yet so young ? 
92 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Every tiger madness muzzled , every serpent passion kill'd. 
Every grim ravine a garden , every blazing desert till'd , 

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles , 
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles. 

5. As in its form, so in its spirit, the poetry 
of Tennyson is marked by a constant and con- 
trolling sense of law and order. He conceives 
the universe under the sway of great laws, phys- 
ical and moral, which are in themselves har- 
monious and beautiful, as well as universal. 
Disorder, discord, disaster, come from the vio- 
lation of these laws. Beauty lies not in con- 
trast but in concord. The noblest character is 
not that in which a single faculty or passion 
is raised to the highest pitch, but that in which 
the balance of the powers is kept, and the life 
unfolds itself in a well-rounded fulness: — 

That mind and soul , according well , 

May make one music as before , 

But vaster. 

Such is the character which is drawn from 
memory in the description of Arthur Hallam 
in In Memoriam; and from imagination in the 
picture of King Arthur in the Idylls. 

Tennyson belongs in the opposite camp from 
the poets of revolt. To him such a vision of 
the swift emancipation of society as Shelley 
93 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


gives in “ Prometheus Unbound,” or “The 
Revolt of Islam,” was not merely impossible; 
it was wildly absurd, a dangerous dream. His 
faith in the advance of mankind rested on two 
bases; first, his intuitive belief in the benev- 
olence of the general order of the universe: — 

Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill : — 

and second, his practical confidence in the suc- 
cess — or at least in the immediate usefulness — 
of the efforts of men to make the world around 
them better little by little. Evolution, not 
revolution, was his watchword. 

Yet I doubt not thro ’ the ages one increasing purpose runs , 

is his cry in the first “Locksley Hall”; and in 
the second he says. 

Follow Light, and do the Right — for man can half-control 
his doom — 

Till you see the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb . 

In the patriotic poems we find that Tenny- 
son’s love of country is sane, sober, steadfast, 
thoughtful. He dislikes the “blind hysterics 
of the Celt,” and fears the red “fool-fury of 
the Seine.” He praises England as 

A land of settled government , 

A land of old and just renown, 

94 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Where freedom slowly broadens down 
From 'precedent to precedent. 

His favourite national heroes are of the An- 
glo-Saxon type, sturdy, resolute, self-contained, 
following the path of duty. He rejoices not 
only in the service which England has rendered 
to the cause of law-encircled liberty, but in 
the way in which she has rendered it: — 
Whatever harmonies of law 
The growing world assume , 

Thy work is thine — The single note 
From that deep chord which Hampden smote 
Will vibrate to the doom. 

[. England and America in 1782.] 

He praises the peaceful reformer as the chief 
benefactor of his country: — 

Not he that breaks the dams , but he 

That thro ’ the channels of the State 
Convoys the people's wish , is great; 

His name is pure y his fame is free. 

[Contributed to the Shakespearean Show-Book, 1884.] 

He is a republican at heart, holding that the 
Queen’s throne must rest 

Broad-based upon her people's will , 

[To the Queen.] 

and he does not hesitate to express his con- 
fidence in 

our slowly-grown 

And crown’d Republic’s crowning common-sense. 

[Epilogue to Idylls of the King.] 


95 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


But he has no faith in the unguided and un- 
governed mob. He calls Freedom 

Thou loather of the lawless crown 
As of the lawless crowd, 

[Freedom, 1884 .] 

It has been said that his poetry shows no 
trace of sympathy with the struggles of the 
people to resist tyranny and defend their liber- 
ties with the sword. This is not true. In one 
of his earliest sonnets he speaks with enthu- 
siasm of Poland’s fight for freedom, and in one 
of his latest he hails the same spirit and the 
same effort in Montenegro. In “The Third of 
February, 1852,” he expresses his indignation 
at the coup d'etat by which Louis Napoleon de- 
stroyed the French Republic, and praises the 
revolutions which overthrew Charles I and 
James II. He dedicates a sonnet to Victor 
Hugo, the “stormy voice of France.” With 
the utmost deliberation and distinctness he 
justifies the cause of the colonies in the Amer- 
ican Revolution: once in “England and America 
in 1782,” and again in the ode for the “Open- 
ing of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition,” 
1886. 

It has been said that he has no sympathy 
with the modern idea of the patriotism of hu- 
manity, — that his love of his own country hides 
96 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


from him the vision of universal liberty and 
brotherhood. This is not true. He speaks of 
it in many places, — in “Locksley Hall,” in 
“Victor Hugo,” in “The Making of Man,” — 
and in the “Ode sung at the Opening of the 
International Exhibition,” 1861, he urges free 
commerce and peaceful cooperation among the 
nations : — 

Till each man find his own in all men’s good. 

And all men work in noble brotherhood , 

Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers. 

And ruling by obeying Nature’s 'powers. 

And gathering all the fruits of earth and crown’d 
with all her flowers. 

It may be, as the Rev. Stopford Brooke says 
in his book on Tennyson, that this view of things 
is less “poetic” than that which is presented 
by the poets of revolt, that it “lowers the note 
of beauty, of fire, of aspiration, of passion.” 
But after all, it was Tennyson’s real view and 
he could not well deny or conceal it. The im- 
portant question is whether it is true and just. 
And that is the first question which a great 
poet asks. He does not lend himself to the 
proclamation of follies and falsehoods, how- 
ever fiery, merely for the sake of being more 
“poetic.” 

In Tennyson’s love poems, while there is 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


often an intensity of passion, there is also a 
singular purity of feeling, a sense of reverence 
for the mystery of love, and a profound loyalty 
to the laws which it is bound to obey in a har- 
monious and well-ordered world. True, he 
takes the romantic, rather than the classical, 
attitude towards love. It comes secretly, sud- 
denly, by inexplicable ways. It is irresistible, 
absorbing, the strongest as well as the most 
precious thing in the world. But he does not 
therefore hold that it is a thing apart from the 
rest of life, exempt, uncontrollable, lawless. 
On the contrary, it should be, in its perfection, 
at once the inspiration and the consummation 
of all that is best in life. In love, truth and 
honour and fidelity and courage and unselfish- 
ness should come to flower. 

There is none of the iridescence of decadent 
erotomania in Tennyson’s love poetry. The 
fatal shame of that morbid and consuming 
fever of the flesh is touched in the description 
of the madness of Lucretius, in “Balin and 
Balan,” and in “ Merlin and Vivien”; but it 
is done in a way that reveals the essential hate- 
fulness of lubricity. 

There is no lack of warmth and bright colour 
in the poems which speak of true love; but it 
is the glow of health instead of the hectic flush 
98 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


of disease; not the sickly hues that mask the sur- 
face of decay, but the livelier iris that the spring- 
time brings to the neck of the burnished dove. 

He does not fail to see the tragedies of love. 
There is the desperate ballad of “Oriana,” the 
sombre story of “ Aylmer’s Field/’ the picture 
of the forsaken Mariana in her moated grange, 
the pathetic idyll of Elaine who died for love 
of Lancelot. But the tragic element in these 
poems comes from the thwarting of love by 
circumstance, not from anything shameful or 
lawless in the passion itself. 

In “The Gardener’s Daughter” the story of 
a pure and simple love is told with a clean rap- 
ture that seems to make earth and sky glow 
with new beauty, and with a reticence that 
speaks not of shallow feeling, but of reverent 
emotion, refusing to fling open 

the doors that bar 

The secret bridal chambers of the heart. 

In The Princess , at the end, triumphant love 
rises to the height of prophecy, foretelling the 
harmony of manhood and womanhood in the 
world’s great bridals: — 

‘Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives , and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal; seeing either sex alone 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 
Nor equal, nor unequal : each fulfils 
Defect in each, and always thought in thought. 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow. 

The single pure and perfect animal. 

The two-celVd heart heating, with one full stroke. 
Life. 9 

There are two of Tennyson’s poems in which 
the subject of love is treated in very different 
ways, but with an equally close and evident 
relation to the sense of harmony and law which 
pervades his poetry. In one of them, it seems 
to me, the treatment is wonderfully successful; 
the poet makes good his design. In the other, 
I think, he comes a little short of it and leaves 
us unsatisfied and questioning. 

Maud is among the most purely impassioned 
presentations of a love-story since Shakespeare’s 
Romeo and Juliet . It not only tells in music 
the growth of a deep, strong, absorbing love, 
victorious over obstacles, but it shows the re- 
deeming, ennobling power of such a passion, 
which leads the selfish hero out of his bitterness 
and narrowness and makes him able at the last 
to consecrate himself to his country’s service. 
The tragedy of the poem is wrought not by 
love, but by another passion, lawless, discor- 
dant, uncontrolled, — the passion of proud hatred 
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THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


which brings about the quarrel with Maud’s 
brother, the fatal duel, her death, the exile and 
madness of her lover. But the poem does not 
end in darkness, after all, for he awakes again 
to “the better mind,” and the love whose earthly 
consummation his own folly has marred abides 
with him as the inspiration of a nobler life. 
The hero may be wrong in thinking that the 
Crimean War is to be a blessing to England 
and to the world. But he is surely right in 
saying. 

It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill. 

In the Idylls of the King there are two main 
threads of love running through the many- 
figured tapestry: Arthur’s love for Guinevere, 
loyal, royal, but somewhat cold and ineffectual: 
Guinevere’s love for Lancelot, disloyal and un- 
true, but warm and potent. It is the secret 
influence of this lawless passion, infecting the 
court, that breaks up the Round Table, and 
brings the kingdom to ruin and the King to 
his defeat. In “Guinevere” Tennyson departs 
from the story as it is told by Malory and in- 
troduces a scene entirely of his own invention: 
the last interview between Arthur, on his way 
to “that great battle. in the west,” and the fallen 
Queen, hiding in the convent at Almesbury. It 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


is a very noble scene; noble in its setting in 
the moon-swathed pallor of the dead winter 
night; noble in its austere splendour of high 
diction and slow-moving verse, intense with 
solemn passion, bare to the heart; noble in 
its conception of the King’s god-like forgive- 
ness and of Guinevere’s remorse and agony 
of shame, too late to countervail the harm that 
she had done on earth, though not too late to 
win the heavenly pardon. All that Arthur 
says of the evil wrought by unlawful and reck- 
less love is true: — 

The children horn of thee are sword and fire , 

Red ruin , and the breaking up of laws. 

All that he says of the crime that it would be 
to condone the Queen’s sin, for the sake of pru- 
dence and peace, reseating her in her place of 
light. 

The mockery of my people and their bane , 

is also true, though it seems at the moment a 
little too much like preaching. But there is 
one thing lacking, — one thing that is necessary 
to make the scene altogether convincing: some 
trace of human sympathy in Arthur’s “vast 
pity,” some consciousness of fault or failure on 
his part in not giving Guinevere all that her 
102 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


nature needed to guard her from the tempta- 
tions of a more vivid though a lower passion. 
Splendid as his words of pardon are, and pierc- 
ingly pathetic as is that last farewell of love, 
still loyal though defrauded; yet he does not 
quite win us. He is more god-like than it be- 
comes a man to be. He is too sure that he has 
never erred, too conscious that he is above weak- 
ness or reproach. We remember the lonely 
Lancelot in his desolate castle; we think of his 
courtesy, his devotion, his splendid courage, 
his winning tenderness, his ardour, the un- 
wavering passion by force of which 

His honour rooted in dishonour stood , 

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. 

Was it wonder that Guinevere, seeing the King 
absorbed in affairs of state, remote, abstracted, 
inaccessible, yielded to this nearer and more 
intimate joy? Sin it was: shame it was: that 
Tennyson makes us see clearly. But how could 
it have been otherwise? Was not the break- 
ing of the law the revenge that nature herself 
took for a need unsatisfied, a harmony uncom- 
pleted and overlooked? This is the question 
that remains unanswered at the close of the 
Idylls of the King . And therefore I think the 
poem unsatisfactory in its treatment of love. 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


But though Tennyson avoids this question, 
and lets Lancelot slip out of the poem at last 
without a word, disappearing like a shadow, 
he never falters in his allegiance to his main 
principle, — the supremacy of law and order. 
This indeed is the central theme of the epic: 
the right of soul to rule over sense and the ruin 
that comes when the relation is reversed. The 
poem ends tragically. But above the wreck of 
a great human design the poet sees the vision 
of a God who “fulfils Himself in many ways”; 
and after earth’s confusions and defeats he 
sees the true-hearted King enthroned in the 
spiritual city and the repentant Queen passing 

To where beyond these voices there is peace. 

6. A religious spirit pervades and marks the 
poetry of Tennyson. His view of the world 
and of human life — his view even of the smallest 
flower that blooms in the world — is illumined 
through and through by his faith in the Divine 
presence and goodness and power. This faith 
was not always serene and untroubled. It 
was won after a hard conflict with doubt and 
despondency, the traces of which may be seen 
in such poems as “The Two Voices” and “The 
Vision of Sin.” But the issue was never really 
in danger. He was not a doubter seeking to 
win a faith. He was a believer defending him- 
104 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

self against misgivings, fighting to hold fast 
that which he felt to be essential to his life. 
The success of his struggle is recorded in In 
Memoriam , which rises through suffering and 
perplexity to a lofty and unshaken trust in 

The truths that never can be proved. 

Until we close with all we loved 
And all we flow from , soul in soul. 

It is not difficult to trace in his religious poems 
of this period the influence of the theology of 
the Rev. F. D. Maurice, who was one of his 
closest friends. The truths which Maurice 
presented most frequently, such as the im- 
manence of God in nature, man’s filial relation 
to Him, the reality of human brotherhood, 
the final victory of Love; the difficulties which 
he recognised in connection with these truths, 
such as the disorders and conflicts in nature, 
the apparent reckless waste of life, the sins 
and miseries of mankind; and the way in which 
he met and overcame these difficulties, not by 
abstract reasoning, nor by a reference to au- 
thority, but by an appeal to the moral and 
spiritual necessities and intuitions of the hu- 
man heart, — all these are presented in Tenny- 
son’s poetry. 

In later life there seems to have been a re- 
currence of questionings, shown in such poems 
105 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


as “Despair,” “De Profundis,” “The Ancient 
Sage,” “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,” 
“Vastness,” “By an Evolutionist.” But this 
was not so much a conflict arising from within, 
as a protest against the tendencies of what he 
called “a terrible age of unfaith,” an effort to 
maintain the rights of the spirit against scien- 
tific materialism. Later still the serene, trium- 
phant mood of the proem to In Memoriam was 
repeated in “Crossing the Bar,” “Silent Voices,” 
“Faith,” “The Death of the Duke of Clarence,” 
and he reposed upon 

that Love which is and was 
My Father and my Brother and my God . 

In spite of his declared unwillingness to for- 
mulate his creed, arising partly from his con- 
viction that humility was the right intellectual 
attitude in the presence of the great mysteries, 
and partly from the feeling that men would 
not understand him if he tried to put his be- 
lief into definite forms, it is by no means im- 
possible to discover in his poetry certain clear 
and vivid visions of religious truths from which 
his poetic life drew strength and beauty. Three 
of these truths stand out distinct and dominant. 

The first is the real, personal, conscious life 
of God. “Take that away,” said he, “and you 
take away the backbone of the Universe.” Ten- 
106 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

nyson is not a theological poet like Milton or 
Cowper, nor even like Wordsworth or Brown- 
ing. But hardly anything that he has written 
could have been written as it is, but for his 
underlying faith that God lives, and knows, 
and loves. This faith is clearly expressed in 
“The Higher Pantheism.” It is not really 
pantheism at all, for while the natural world 
is regarded as “the Vision of Him who reigns,” 
it is also the sign and symbol that the human 
soul is distinct from Him. All things reveal 
Him, but man’s sight and hearing are dark- 
ened so that he cannot understand the revela- 
tion. God is in all things: He is with all souls, 
but He is not to be identified with the human 
spirit, which has “power to feel ‘I am I.’ ” 
Fellowship with Him is to be sought and found 
in prayer. 

This confidence in the reality of prayer is ex- 
pressed in many of Tennyson’s deeper poems. 
We find it in “Enoch Arden,” in “St. Agnes’ 
Eve,” in “The Palace of Art,” in In Memoriam , 
in “The Two Voices,” in the “Ode on the Death 
of the Duke of Wellington,” in “Doubt and 
Prayer,” in “Lancelot and Elaine,” in “Guin- 
evere,” in “Morte d’Arthur”: — 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. 

107 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Tennyson’s optimism was dependent upon his 
faith in a God to whom men can pray. It was 
not a matter of temperament, like Browning’s 
optimism. Tennyson inherited from his father 
a strain of gloomy blood, a tendency to despon- 
dency. He escaped from it only by learning 
to trust in the Divine wisdom and love. 

The second truth which stands out in the 
poetry of Tennyson is the freedom of the hu- 
man will. This is a mystery: — 

Our wills are ours we know not how. 

It is also an indubitable reality: — 

This main miracle , that thou art thou , 

With power on thine own act and on the world. 

[De Profundis.] 

The existence of such liberty of action in created 
beings implies a self-limitation on the part of 
God, but it is essential to moral responsibility 
and vital communion with the Divine. If man 
is only a “magnetic mockery,” a “cunning cast 
in clay,” he has no real life of his own, nothing 
to give back to God. The joy of effort and 
the glory of virtue depend upon freedom. This 
is the meaning of Enid’s Song, in “The Marriage 
of Geraint”: — 

For man is man and master of his fate. 

108 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


This is the central thought of that strong little 
poem called “Will”:— 

0 well for him whose will is strong / 

, He suffers , but he will not suffer long; 

He suffersy but he cannot suffer wrong. 

This is the theme of the last lyric of In Memo - 
riam : — 

0 living will that shalt endure 

When all that seems shall suffer shoclc f 
Rise in the spiritual rocky 
Flow thro 9 our deeds and make them pure. 

The third truth which is vitally embodied in 
Tennyson’s poems is the assurance of Life after 
Death. This he believed in most deeply and 
uttered most passionately. He felt that the 
present life would be poor and pitiful, almost 
worthless and unendurable, without the hope 
of Immortality. The rolling lines of “Vast- 
ness” are a long protest against the cold doc- 
trine that death ends all. “Wages” is a swift 
utterance of the hope which inspires Virtue: — 

Give her the wages of going on , and not to die. 

The second “Locksley Hall,” the Wellington 
Ode, “The May Queen,” “Guinevere,” “Enoch 
Arden,” “The Deserted House,” “The Poet’s 
Song,” “Happy,” the lines on “The Death of 
109 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


the Duke of Clarence/’ “ Silent Voices/’ — it 
is not possible to enumerate the poems in which 
the clear faith in a future life finds expression. 
In Memoriam is altogether filled and glorified 
with the passion of Immortality: not a vague 
and impersonal survival in other forms, but a 
continuance of individual life beyond the grave. 

It is a vain and idle thing for men who are 
themselves indifferent to the spiritual aspects 
of life, or perhaps hostile and contemptuous 
toward a religious view of the universe, to 
declare that there is no place in poetry for such 
subjects, and to sneer at every poem in which 
they appear as “a disguised sermon.” No doubt 
there are many alleged poems dealing with 
religion which deserve no better name: versi- 
fied expositions of theological dogma: creeds 
in metre: moral admonitions tagged with rhyme; 
a weariness to the flesh. But so there are al- 
leged poems which deal with the facts of the 
visible world and of human history in the same 
dreary, sapless manner: catalogues of miscel- 
laneous trifles, records of unilluminating expe- 
riences, confused impressions of the insignif- 
icant, and unmelodious rhapsodies on subjects 
as empty as an old tin can in a vacant city lot. 

It is not the presence of religion that spoils 
religious verse. It is the absence of poetry. 

110 


THE MAN AND HIS WORK 


Poetry is vision. Poetry is music. Poetry is 
an overflow of wonder and joy, pity and love. 
Truths which lie in the spiritual realm have 
as much power to stir the heart to this over- 
flow as truths which lie in the physical realm. 
There is an imaginative vision of the meaning 
of religious truths — a swift flashing of their 
significance upon the inward eye, a sudden 
thrilling of their music through the inward 
ear — which is as full of beauty and wonder, as 
potent to “ surprise us by a fine excess,” as 
any possible human experience. It is poetic 
in the very highest sense of the word. There 
may be poetry, and very admirable poetry, 
without it. But the poet who never sees it, 
nor sings of it, in whose verse there is no ray 
of light, no note of music, from beyond the 
range of the five senses, has never reached the 
heights nor sounded the depths of human na- 
ture. 

The influence of Tennyson’s poetry in re- 
vealing the reality and beauty of three great 
religious beliefs — the existence of the Divine 
Spirit who is our Father, the freedom of the 
human will, and the personal life after death — 
was deep, far-reaching, and potent. He stood 
among the doubts and conflicts of the last cen- 
tury as a witness for the things that are in- 
111 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


visible and eternal: the things that men may 
forget if they will, but if they forget them their 
hearts wither, and the springs of inspiration 
run dry. His rich and musical verse brought 
a message of new cheer and courage to the 
young men of that questioning age who were 
fain to defend their spiritual heritage against 
the invasions of a hard and fierce materialism. 
In the vital conflict for the enlargement of faith 
to embrace the real discoveries of science, he 
stood forth as a leader. In the great silent 
reaction from the solitude of a consistent skep- 
ticism, his voice was a clear-toned bell calling 
the unwilling exiles of belief to turn again and 
follow the guidance of the Spirit. No new ar- 
guments were his. But the sweetness of a poet’s 
persuasion, the splendour of high truths em- 
bodied in a poet’s imagination, the convincing 
beauty of noble beliefs set forth in clear dream 
and solemn vision, — these were the powers that 
he employed. 

In using them he served not only his own 
day and generation but ours and those that 
are to come. 


in 


II 

THE FIRST FLIGHT 


fT^HE first appearance of a true poet usually 
A bears at least one mark of celestial origin 
— he “cometh not with observation.” A small 
volume is printed on some obscure press. The 
friends to whom it is sent, “with the compli- 
ments of the author,” return thanks for it in 
words which compromise truth with affection. 
The local newspaper applauds it in a perfunc- 
tory way; some ogre of a critic, whose appetite 
for young poets is insatiable, may happen to 
make a hasty meal of it; or some kindly re- 
viewer, who is always looking on the hopeful 
side of literature, may discover in it the buds 
of promise. But this is mainly a matter of 
chance; the certainty is that there will be few 
to buy the book with hard cash, and fewer still 
to read it, except from curiosity or friendship, 
and that the great world will roll on its way as 
serenely as if nothing of consequence had oc- 
curred. 

Somewhat after this fashion many of the 
leading English poets have arrived. There 
113 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


was no great stir made by the publication of 
Descriptive Sketches , or Hours of Idleness. The 
announcement of Original Poems by Victor and 
Cazire did not produce any excitement. Even 
Venus and Adonis failed to inform the public 
that the future creator of Hamlet and Othello 
had appeared The recognition of genius in a 
first flight rarely takes place at the proper time; 
it is reserved for those prophets who make their 
predictions after the event. 

But surely there never was a poet of rank 
who slipped into print more quietly than the 
junior author of Poems by Two Brothers. The 
book was published in 1827 for J. & J. Jackson, 
of Louth, and W. Simpkin & B. Marshall, of 
London. The title-page bore an apologetic 
motto from Martial: “We know that these 
things amount to nothing.” The preface re- 
peated the same sentiment in more diffuse lan- 
guage. 

“The following Poems were written from the 
ages of fifteen to eighteen, not conjointly, but 
individually, which may account for their dif- 
ferences of style and matter. To light upon 
any novel combination of images, or to open 
any vein of sparkling thought, untouched be- 
fore, were no easy task; indeed, the remark 
itself is as old as the truth is clear; and no doubt, 
114 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 

if submitted to the microscopic eye of periodical 
criticism, a long list of inaccuracies and imita- 
tions would result from the investigation. But 
so it is; we have passed the Rubicon, and we 
leave the rest to fate, though its edict may create 
a fruitless regret that we ever emerged from the 
‘the shade’ and courted notoriety.” 

That was surely a most gentle way of passing 
the Rubicon. The only suggestion of a flourish 
of trumpets was the capital P in “Poems.” 
Fate, who sat smiling on the bank, must have 
been propitiated by a bow so modest and so 
awkward. Not even the names of the young 
aspirants for public favor were given, and only 
the friends of the family could have known 
that the two brothers who thus stepped out, 
hand in hand, from “the shade” were Charles 
and Alfred Tennyson. 

It is difficult to conjecture — unless, indeed, 
we are prepared to adopt some theory of the 
disinterested benevolence of publishers — what 
induced the Jacksons to pay twenty pounds 
for the privilege of printing this book. But if 
they were alive to-day, and had kept a suf- 
ficient number of the first edition on their 
shelves, their virtue would have its reward; 
for I must confess to having paid half as much 
for a single copy as they gave for the copy- 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

right, and, as prices go, it was an excellent bar- 
gain. 

Here it is — a rather stout little volume of 
two hundred and twenty-eight pages, paper 
not of the finest, print not without errors. It 
contains one hundred and two pieces of verse, 
in all kinds of metres, imitated after an amaz- 
ing variety of models. There is nothing very 
bad and nothing very inspiring. The Literary 
Chronicle and Weekly Review came as near to 
the truth as one can expect of a newspaper 
when it said: “This volume exhibits a pleas- 
ing union of kindred tastes, and contains sev- 
eral little pieces of considerable merit.” That 
is the only contemporary criticism which has 
been exhumed. And it would be absurd, at 
this late day, to turn the “microscopic eye,” 
of which the brothers were so afraid, upon their 
immature production. 

And yet, to one who can find a pleasure in 
tracing the river to its narrow source among 
the hills, this book is well worth reading. For 
somewhere between these covers, hardly to be 
distinguished from the spring of that twin rivu- 
let of verse which ran so brief a course in the 
Sonnets and Small Tableaux of Charles Tenny- 
son, lies the fountain-head of that deeper, clearer 
stream which flowed forth into In Memoriam 
116 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 


and the Idylls of the King , and refreshed the 
English-speaking world for more than sixty 
years with the poetry of Alfred Tennyson. Here 
we may pause for a moment and glance at some 
of the impulses which led him to commence 
poet, and the influences which directed his 
earliest efforts. 

It seems to me that the most interesting and 
significant thing about this little book is the 
fact that the two brothers appear in it together; 
for this tells us a great deal in regard to the 
atmosphere of the home in which Tennyson’s 
boyhood was passed. The seven sons and four 
daughters of the rector of Somersby were not 
ordinary children; nor was their education 
conducted in that dull, commonplace. Grad- 
grind spirit which so often crushes all original- 
ity out of a child. The doors of the ideal world 
were opened to them very early; they were 
encouraged to imagine as well as to think; they 
peopled their playgrounds with lofty visions 
of kings and knights, and fought out the world- 
old battles of right and wrong in their childish 
games, and wove their thoughts of virtue and 
courage and truth into long romances with 
which they entertained each other in turn at 
the dinner-table. The air of the house was 
full of poetry. 


117 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Charles, the second son, was probably the 
leader in this life of fancy. It was he, at all 
events, who first led his brother Alfred, his 
junior by a year, into the poetic path. One 
Sunday morning, when Alfred was to be left 
at home alone, Charles gave him a slate and 
told him to write some verses about the flowers 
in the garden. The task was eagerly accepted, 
and when the family had returned from church, 
the little boy came with his slate all written 
over with lines of blank verse, to ask for his 
brother’s approval. Charles read them gravely 
and .carefully, with the earnestness of a child- 
ish critic. Then he gave the slate back again, 
saying, “ Yes, you can write.” I doubt whether 
Alfred Tennyson ever heard a word of praise 
that gave him more true delight than this fra- 
ternal recognition. 

Having found each other as kindred spirits, 
the two boys held closely together. They were 
intimate friends. They helped and cheered 
and criticised each other in their common stud- 
ies and writings. It is a good omen for genius 
when it is capable of fraternity. It is the best 
possible safeguard against eccentricity and mor- 
bidness and solitary pride. Charles Lamb was 
right when he wrote to Coleridge: “O my 
friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no 
man think himself released from the kind chari- 
118 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 


ties of relationship.” Tennyson’s best work 
has never lost the insight of the heart. And 
if there were no other reason for valuing these 
Poems by Two Brothers , we should still prize 
them as the monument of a brotherly love to 
which the poet has paid this tribute in In Memo - 
riam : 

But thou and I are one in kind , 

As moulded like in Nature's mint; 

And hill and wood and field did 'print 
The same sweet forms on either mind. 

For us the same cold streamlet curVd 
Thro ’ all his eddying coves; the same 
All winds that roam the twilight came 
In whispers of the beauteous world. 

At one dear knee we proffer’d vows; 

One lesson from one book we learn’ d. 

Ere childhood’ s flaxen ringlet turn’d 
To black and brown on kindred brows. 

Another notable feature in this book is the 
great number of quotations from modern and 
classical authors. Almost all of the poems 
have mottoes. I glance over them at random, 
and find scraps from Virgil, Addison, Gray, 
Clare, Cicero, Horace, Moore, Byron, Milton, 
Racine, Claudian, Rousseau, Scott, Hume, Os- 
sian, Lucretius, Sallust, and The Mysteries of 
Udolpho. These school-boys must have loved 
their books well, if not wisely. 

119 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Moreover, there are foot-notes in which they 
tell us that “pight is a word used by Spenser 
and Shakespeare,” and that “none but the 
priests could interpret the Egyptian hiero- 
glyphics,” and that “Ponce de Leon discovered 
Florida when he was in search of the fabled 
fountain of youth,” and that “Apollonius Rho- 
dius was not born at Alexandria, but at Nau- 
cratis.” The display of learning is amusing. 
But it is not without significance, for it dis- 
tinctly marks Tennyson as one of those who, 
like Milton, were students as well as poets, 
and whose genius did not develop in solitude, 

but in Converse with all forms 

Of the many-sided mind. 

The volume abounds in imitations; indeed, 
there is hardly a piece in it which does not sound 
like an echo of some other poet. The influence 
which is most clearly marked is that of Byron. 
He is quoted six times. There is a strong flavour 
of his dramatic melancholy in such lines as, 

I wander in darkness and sorrow , 

Unfriended and cold and alone; 

and, 

I stand like some lone tower 
Of former days remaining , 

Within whose place of power 
The midnight owl is plaining . 

120 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 


It is evident that this grief could not have 
been very real to a school-boy between fifteen 
and eighteen. It was like the gloom of Shake- 
speare’s young gentleman of France who was 
“sad as night only for wantonness.” And the 
fashion of the sadness was learned from the 
author of Childe Harold . His metrical manner 
also is copied with undisguised enthusiasm. 
The lad who wrote, 

Thou shalt come like a storm when the moonlight is dim , 
And the lake's gloomy bosom is full to the brim; 

Thou shalt come like the flash in the darkness of night , 
When the wolves of the forest shall howl with affright , 

had certainly been captured by the Assyrian 
who came down like the wolf on the fold. 

After reading this it is interesting to hear 
Tennyson tell in his own words, spoken many 
years afterward, how the news of Byron’s 
death had affected him: “Byron was dead. 
I thought the whole world was at an end. I 
thought everything was over and finished for 
every one — that nothing else mattered. I re- 
member, I walked out alone and carved ‘ Byron 
is dead’ into the sandstone.” 

The spell of this passionate devotion soon 
passed away, but perhaps we can see some lin- 
gering trace of its effects in poems as late as 

m 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


“Locksley Hall” and Maud . Indeed, I think 
the influence of Byron upon Tennyson has been 
generally underrated. 

There are a few other points of interest in 
this little volume. For instance, the variety of 
metrical forms indicates an unusual freedom 
and catholicity of taste. The result of such a 
miscellaneous admiration of all styles, from the 
finish of Horace to the formlessness of Ossian, 
might possibly be nothing better than a facility 
in general imitation, the fluency of a successful 
parodist. But if a boy had real genius it would 
lead him on to try experiments in many metres 
until he mastered those which were best fitted 
to express his thoughts, and gave new life to 
obsolete forms of verse, and finally, perhaps, 
created some original forms. And this, in fact, 
is what Tennyson has done. He has attempted 
almost every kind of measure. And though 
his early efforts were so irregular that Cole- 
ridge remarked that “ Tennyson had begun to 
write poetry without knowing what metre was,” 
yet in the long run he made himself one of the 
most musical of English poets. 

In 1893, sixty-six years after the original 
publication, a new edition of Poems by Two 
Brothers was brought out, with a preface by 
Hallam, Lord Tennyson, the poet’s son. In 
122 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 

this edition the poems were attributed, as far 
as possible, to their respective authors, on the 
evidence of the differences in the handwriting 
of the manuscript and the recollections of Mr. 
Frederick Tennyson, who, it now appears, con- 
tributed four or five poems to his brothers’ 
volume. 

It is interesting to note that the pieces which 
show the greatest freedom and rapidity, and 
also, it must be admitted, the greatest irregular- 
ity of metrical movement, are those which bear 
the initials A. T. The rule which is so painfully 
familiar to those who are learning to skate seems 
to hold good for those who are learning to write 
verse. Success is impossible without a good 
many falls. 

Scattered through these early verses we find 
a number of thoughts and phrases which Ten- 
nyson used again in his more mature poems. 
I will give a few illustrations of these parallel 
passages. 

In “Remorse” we find the lines: 

To life , whose every hour to me 
Hath been increase of misery. 

“The Two Voices” gives us the same thought: 

Thou art so full of misery , 

Were it not better not to be? 

123 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

In “Midnight” there is a reference to 

the glutting wave 
That saps eternally the cold gray steep; 

which reminds us of 

Break , break, break. 

On thy cold gray stones, 0 Sea! 

In “Switzerland” the poet cries: 

0 ! when shall Time 
Avenge the crime? 

and in “The Vision of Sin” he says again: 

It was a crime 

Of sense, avenged by sense that wore with time . 

In the poem on“ Sublimity ” we find the phrase 
“holds communion with the dead,” which oc- 
curs again in one of the most beautiful pas- 
sages of In Memoriam. 

In “Egypt” we find: 

The first glitter of his rising beams 
Falls on the broad-bas'd pyramids sublime. 

The epithet recurs in “A Fragment,” printed in 
an annual in 1830: 

The great pyramids, 

Broad-bas'd amid the fleeting sands. 

Other passages might be quoted to show the 
connection between Tennyson’s earlier and later 
124 


THE FIRST FLIGHT 


work. It is one of his characteristics that he 
uses the same image more than once, and that 
the repetition is almost always an improve- 
ment. But it will be more profitable to close 
this brief introductory essay with a few lines 
which are worthy to be remembered for their 
own sake, and which belong to the first genuine 
poetry of Alfred Tennyson. True and broad 
descriptive power is shown in such lines as these: 

Like some far fire at night 
Along the dun deep streaming. 

A wan , dull, lengthen'd sheet of swimming light 
Lies the broad lake — 

The thunder of the brazen prows 
O'er Actium's ocean rung. 

But the passage which exhibits the most 
sustained vigour of expression is found in the 
poem entitled “Persia.” It is a description of 
the great king contemplating the ruin of his 
empire. He spreads the dust upon his laurelled 
head, as he is forced 

To view the setting of that star 
Which beam'd so gorgeously and far 
O'er Anatolia , and the fane 
Of Belus, and Caister's plain , 

And Sardis , and the glittering sands 
Of bright Pactolus , and the lands 
Where Croesus held his rich domain; 

125 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

And further east , where broadly roll'd 
Old Indus pours his streams of gold; 

And southward to Cilicia's shore , 

Where Cydnus meets the billows' roar; 

And northward far to Trebizonde, 

Renown' d for kings of chivalry , 

Where Hyssus rolling from the strand 
Disgorges in the Euxine Sea — 

The Euxine , falsely named, which whelms 
The mariner in the heaving tide — 

To high Sinope's distant realms. 

Where cynics rail'd at human pride. 

This is not great poetry, but it is vigourous 
verse. It is glorified nomenclature. Milton 
himself need not have been ashamed to acknowl- 
edge it. The boy who could write like this be- 
fore he was eighteen years old knew something, 
at least, of the music and magic of names. If 
we may read our history, like our Hebrew, back- 
ward, we can detect the promise of a true poet 
in the swing and sweep of these lines, and recog- 
nise the wing-trial of genius in Tennyson’s first 
flight. 


126 


Ill 

THE PALACE OF ART 

npHE year of our Lord eighteen hundred and 
thirty-three was a period of waiting and 
uncertainty in English literature. Twelve years 
had passed since the brief, bright light of Keats 
went out at Rome; eleven years, since the waters 
of Spezzia’s treacherous bay closed over the 
head of Shelley; nine years, since the wild flame 
of Byron’s heart burned away at Missolonghi; 
a few months, since the weary hand of Scott 
had at last let fall the wizard’s wand. The 
new leaders were dead; the old leaders were 
silent. Wordsworth was reclining on the dry 
laurels of his Ecclesiastical Sonnets at Rydal 
Mount; Coleridge was pacing up and down 
the garden-path at Highgate talking transcen- 
dental metaphysics; Southey had ceased writ- 
ing what he called poetry; Thomas Moore was 
warbling his old songs to an audience which 
had almost begun to weary of them. The com- 
ing man had not yet arrived. Dickens was a 
short-hand reporter in the House of Commons; 
Thackeray was running through his property 
in the ruinous dissipation of newspaper-pub- 
127 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


lishing; Carlyle was wrestling with poverty 
and the devil at Craigenputtock; Robert Brown- 
ing, a youth of twenty, was travelling in Italy; 
Matthew Arnold and Arthur Clough were boys 
at Rugby; William Morris and Algernon 
Charles Swinburne were yet unborn. In this 
somewhat barren and unpromising interval, the 
poetical reputation of Mr. Alfred Tennyson, 
late of the University of Cambridge, was trem- 
bling in the balance of Criticism. 

Criticism with a large C; for the reign of 
their mighty Highnesses, the Reviewers, was 
still unshaken. Seated upon their lofty thrones 
in London and Edinburgh, they weighed the 
pretensions of all new-comers into their realms 
with severity if not with impartiality, and meted 
out praise and blame with a royal hand. In 
those rude days there was no trifling with a 
book in little “notices” of mild censure or tepid 
approbation, — small touches which, if unfavour- 
able, hardly hurt more than pin-pricks, and if 
favourable, hardly help more than gentle pats 
upon the back. That is the suave, homoeo- 
pathic method of modern times: but then — in 
the days of Herod the king — it was either the 
accolade or decapitation. Many an innocent 
had the dreadful Gifford slaughtered, and though 
he had done his last book, there were other 
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men, like Wilson and Croker and Lockhart, 
who still understood and practiced the art of 
speedy dispatch. Blackwood and The Quar- 
terly still clothed themselves with Olympian 
thunder, 

“ And that two-handed engine at their door. 

Stood ready to smite once and smite no more” 

It was before this stern tribunal that young 
Tennyson had made his appearance in 1830 
with a slim volume of Poems , Chiefly Lyrical. 
They were fifty-three in number, and covered 
only one hundred and fifty-four pages; yet 
within that narrow compass at least a score 
of different metres were attempted with amaz- 
ing skill, and the range of subjects extended 
from "The Merman” to "Supposed Confessions 
of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind not in Unity 
with Itself.” One can easily imagine the indig- 
nation and scorn which the latter title must 
have excited in the first-rate unsensitive mind 
of an orthodox Edinburgh Reviewer. 

Nor were the general style and quality of 
the poems calculated to mollify these feelings. 
Dainty in finish, pre-raphaelite in their minute 
painting of mosses and flowers and in their 
super-subtle shading of emotions, musical yet 
irregular, modem in sentiment yet tinged with 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

some archaic mannerisms, the poems taken al- 
together made an impression of delicacy and 
artificiality which obscured the real strength of 
some of them, such as “Mariana,” “The Poet,” 
“Ode to Memory,” and “The Deserted House.” 
Arthur Henry Hallam praised them, but that 
counted for little, because he was Tennyson’s 
friend. The Westminster Review praised them, 
but that counted for little, because it belonged 
to the party of literary revolt. Leigh Hunt 
praised them, but that counted for worse than 
nothing, because he was the arch-heretic of 
poetry, the leader of the so-called “Cockney 
school.” The authoritative voice of Criticism 
was not heard until “ Christopher North” took 
up the new poet in Blackwood , and administered 
the castigation which he thought necessary and 
salutary. Mingling a little condescending en- 
couragement with his condemnation, and hold- 
ing out the hope that if “Alfred” would only 
reform his style and get rid of his cockney ad- 
mirers he might some day write something 
worth reading, the stern magister set to work 
in the meantime to demolish the dainty lyrics. 
Drivel, and more dismal drivel, and even more 
dismal drivel was what he called them; and 
in winding up his remarks upon the song en- 
titled “The Owl,” he said: “Alfred himself is the 
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greatest owl; all he wants is to be shot, stuffed, 
and stuck in a glass case, to be made immortal 
in a museum.” 

Truly this was Criticism of the athletic order; 
the humour of it lies in the unconscious absence 
of wit. Six months after this article was printed, 
in December, 1832, Tennyson put out his second 
volume. Its title-page ran as follows: Poems 
by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 
64, New Bond Street. MDCCCXXXIII. It 
is, therefore, properly speaking, the edition of 
1833. 

It lies on my desk now, a slender volume of 
one hundred and sixty-three pages, with Barry 
Cornwall’s autograph on the fly-leaf, and his 
pencil-marks of approbation running along the 
margins. It contains only thirty poems, but 
among them are such fine things as “The 
Lady of Shalott,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” 
“(Enone,” “The Palace of Art,” “The Lotos- 
Eaters,” and “A Dream of Fair Women.” 

It was evident at once that the young poet 
had not changed his style, though he had en- 
riched it. Fuller and stronger were his notes, 
more manly and of a wider range; but his sing- 
ing was still marked by the same lyrical free- 
dom, the same delicacy of imagination, the 
same unconventional choice of words, the same 
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peculiar blending of the classic with the romantic 
spirit, — qualities which to us have become so 
familiar that we can hardly realise how fresh 
and strange they must have seemed to the read- 
ers of eighty years ago. It was clear enough 
that this new writer was no mere disciple of 
Leigh Hunt, or neophyte of the Cockney 
school, to be frightened back into the paths 
of propriety by brutal thunders. He might be 
moving on the same lines which Keats had 
begun to follow, but he was going beyond his 
leader; he was introducing a new spirit and 
method into English verse; he bid fair to be- 
come the master of a new school of poetry. In 
the opinion of the reviewers he needed to be 
dealt with mildly, but firmly. And this time 
it was not “ crusty Christopher,” but a more 
dangerous critic, who undertook the task. The 
review of Tennyson’s poems which appeared in 
the Quarterly for July, 1833, is one of the 
cleverest and bitterest things ever written, 
and though unacknowledged, it has always 
been attributed to the editor, James Gibson 
Lockhart, sometimes called “the scorpion,” 
because of a certain peculiarity in the latter 
end of his articles. 

He begins in a tone of ironical compliment, 
apologising for never having seen Mr. Tenny- 
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son’s first volume, and proposing to repair his 
unintentional neglect by now introducing to 
the admiration of sequestered readers “a new 
prodigy of genius, another and a brighter star 
of that galaxy or milky way of poetry of which 
the lamented Keats was the harbinger.” He 
proceeds to offer what he calls "a tribute of 
unmingled approbation,” and selecting a few 
specimens of Mr. Tennyson’s singular genius, 
“to point out now and then the peculiar bril- 
liancy of some of the gems that irradiate his 
poetical crown.” 

This means, in plain words, to hold up the 
whole performance to ridicule by commending 
its weakest points in extravagant mock-lauda- 
tion, and passing over its best points in silence. 
A method more unfair and exasperating can 
hardly be imagined. It is like applauding a 
musician for every false note. Lockhart’s “un- 
mingled approbation” was a thousand times 
more severe than old Christopher’s blunt and 
often clumsy abuse. It was as if one had praised 
Pope for his amiable temper, or Wordsworth for 
his keen sense of humour. 

And yet, — after all, — in spite of the malicious 
spirit and the unjust method of the article, — 
we may as well confess that on many points 
Lockhart was right. His hard, formal, opinion- 
133 


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ated mind could not possibly appreciate the 
merits of Tennyson, but it could and it did 
detect the faults of his earlier work. In almost 
every case the shaft of the reviewer’s irony 
found the joint in the poet’s armour and touched 
some vulnerable spot. 

The proof of this is furnished by Tennyson 
himself. For ten years he preserved an almost 
unbroken silence. When at length he published 
his Poems , in Two Volumes , in 1842, he was 
recognised immediately as the poet, not of a 
coterie, but of England. The majestic blank- 
verse of “Morte d’Arthur,” the passionate force 
of “Locksley Hall,” the sweet English beauty of 
‘‘Dora,” “The Gardener’s Daughter,” and “The 
Talking Oak,” the philosophic depth and human 
intensity of “The Two Voices” and “The Vision 
of Sin,” — and perhaps more than all the simple, 
magical pathos of that undying song, 

Break , breaks break , 

On thy cold gray stones , 0 Sea! 

won the admiration of readers of every class. 
But no less significant than these new poems, 
in the history of his development, was the form 
in which his earlier poems were reprinted. The 
edition of 1842 contained a selection from the 
edition of 1833; and it is remarkable that all of 
134 


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the weaker pieces which Lockhart had criticised 
most severely were omitted, while those which 
were retained were so carefully pruned and cor- 
rected as to seem almost rewritten. There is 
a certain importance, for example, in such a 
slight change as the omission of the accent from 
words like charmed and apparelled. It in- 
dicates a desire to avoid even the appearance 
of affectation. 

Or take this passage from “The Miller’s 
Daughter” in its first form: — 

Remember you that 'pleasant day 
When after roving in the woods , 

( [’Twas April then), I came and lay 
Beneath the gummy chestnut-buds 
That glistened in the April blue . 

TJpon the slope so smooth and cool 
1 lay and never thought of you 
But angled in the deep mill-pool. 

A water-rat from off the bank 

Plunged in the stream . With idle care 
Downlooking through the sedges rank 
I saw your troubled image there. 

Upon the dark and dimpled beck 
It wandered like a floating light , 

A full fair form , a warm white neck 
And two white arms — how rosy white / 

These are very pretty lines, and doubtless quite 
true to nature, for the buds of the chestnut 
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are very sticky in April, and the water-rat has 
a habit of diving suddenly into the water. But 
as Lockhart politely observed, the accumula- 
tion of such tender images as the gummy buds 
and the plunging rat was somewhat unusual 
and disturbing. 

Now a modem poet of the Impressionist, or 
Imagist, or Cubist School, would take such 
criticism very much amiss. He would hold 
that the unusual and disturbing quality of the 
gum and the rat was what gave them their 
poetic value, since poetry without shock is 
vapid. If he deigned to revise his verses at 
all, he would probably do it by inserting some 
water-spiders, a frog, and two or 'three sting- 
ing nettles in the decor of the play. 

But Tennyson, being young but not omni- 
scient, felt that there was something in Lock- 
hart’s criticism. He recognised that the canon 
of truth to nature must be supplemented by 
the canon of symmetry in art, and that facts 
which are incongruous and out of harmony 
must not be recorded. The water-rat was not 
profoundly suggestive of love at first sight. 
Moreover, as a point of realism, one who was 
looking up at the chestnut-buds would not 
have noticed their stickiness, but only their 
shining as they were moved by the wind. Here, 
136 


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then, is the new version of the passage, quite 
as true but far more poetical, and made simpler 
by a more careful art: — 

But , Alice , what an hour was that. 

When after roving in the woods 
C Twas April then), I came and sat 
Below the chestnuts, when their buds 
Were glistening to the breezy blue; 

And on the slope, an absent fool 
I cast me down, nor thought of you. 

But angled in the higher pool . 

Then leapt a trout. In lazy mood 
I watch'd the little circles die; 

They past into the level flood. 

And there a vision caught my eye; 

The reflex of a beauteous form, 

A glowing arm, a gleaming neck. 

As when a sunbeam wavers warm 
Within the dark and dimpled beck. 

Now a poet who could take criticism in this 
fashion and use it to such good purpose, was 
certainly neither weak nor wayward. Weighed 
in the balance, he was not found wanting but 
steadily growing. He would not abandon his 
art at the voice of censure, but correct and 
perfect it. The method and the result of this 
process of self-correction — which Tennyson has 
practiced more patiently and successfully than 
any other poet — may be traced most clearly 
137 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


in the history of “The Palace of Art,” the 
longest and in a certain sense the most impor- 
tant of the 1833 poems. Nor can I think of any 
better way to study the unfolding of his genius 
and the development of his style, than to ob- 
serve carefully the number and nature of the 
changes which he has made in this poem. 

The poem is an allegory, a splendid piece of 
symbolic verse. It shows a gifted but selfish 
soul, in its endeavours to live alone in its own 
enchanted world of refined and consummate 
pleasures, without caring for the interests or 
the sufferings of the great world of mankind. 
Such a life must be a failure and carry its punish- 
ment within itself. The poem is an sesthetic 
protest against sestheticism. But it is worthy 
of notice that, while the dedication in the first 
edition was addressed to a member of the 
sesthetic class, — an artist, — in the second edi- 
tion these lines have disappeared. It is as if 
the poet desired to give a wider range to his 
lesson; as if he would say, “You are a man, 
and no matter what your occupation may be, 
you will feel the truth of this allegory.” 

This first alteration is characteristic. It 
shows us the transformation of Tennyson’s 
feelings and purposes during those eventful 
ten years of silence. He had grown broader 
and deeper. He was no longer content to write 
138 


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for a small and select circle of readers. His 
sympathies were larger and more humane. He 
began to feel that he had a country; and patri- 
otism inspired him to write for England. He 
began to feel that the lives of common men 
and women were full of materials for poetry; 
and philanthropy inspired him to speak as a 
man to his fellow-men. This change was 
prophesied in the first conception of “ The Pal- 
ace of Art,” but when the fulfilment came, it 
was so thorough that it had power to remould 
the form of the prophecy itself. 

The Palace which the poet built for his soul 
is described as standing on a lofty tableland, 
secure and inaccessible, for his first object was 
to dwell apart from the world. Then follows, 
in the original edition, a description of its long- 
sounding corridors. 

Roofed with thick plates of green and orange glass , 
Ending in stately rooms . 

In the second edition the architect’s good taste 
has discarded this conservatory effect and these 
curiously combined colours. He describes in- 
stead the surroundings of the Palace, with its 
four great courts and its foaming fountains, 
its smooth lawns and branching cloisters. He 
draws a gilded parapet around the roof, and 
shows the distant landscape. In following this 
139 


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order he has given reality and dignity to his 
structure, so that it seems less like a picture- 
gallery and more like a royal mansion. 

Then he leads the soul through the different 
rooms, and describes the tapestries on the 
walls. As the poem stood at first these included 
the Madonna, Venus Anadyomene, St. Cecily, 
Arthur in the valley of Avilion, Kriemhilt pour- 
ing the Nibelungen gold into the Rhine, Eu- 
ropa, with her hand grasping the golden horn 
of the bull, and Ganymede borne upward by 
the eagle, together with landscapes of forest 
and pasture, sea-coast, mountain-glen, and 
woodland, interspersed with gardens and vine- 
yards. When the Palace was changed, Venus 
and Kriemhilt disappeared, and Europa occu- 
pied a smaller place. Pictures of Numa and 
his wise wood-nymphs, Indian Cama seated on 
his summer throne, and the porch of Moham- 
med’s Paradise thronged with houris, were 
added. And among the landscapes there were 
two new scenes, one of cattle feeding by a river, 
and another of reapers at their sultry toil. 

The soul pauses here, in the first edition, and 
indulges in a little rhapsody on the evolution 
of the intellect. This disappears in the second 
edition, and we pass directly from the chambers 
hung with arras into the great hall, the central 
140 


THE PALACE OF ART 


apartment of the Palace. Here the architect 
had gathered, at first, a collection of portraits 
of great men which was so catholic in its taste 
as to be almost motley. Lockhart laughed 
derisively when he contemplated the gallery. 
“Milton, Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Michael 
Angelo, Martin Luther, Francis Bacon, Cer- 
vantes, Calderon, King David, the Halicarnas- 
sean (queer e, which of them?), Alfred himself 
(presumably not the poet), 

Isaiah with fierce Ezekiel , 

Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea, 

Plato, Petrarca, Livy, Raphael, 

And eastern Confutzee ” 

This reminds Lockhart of a verse in that 
Hibernian poem, The Groves of Blarney , and 
he wonders whether Mr. Tennyson was not 
thinking of the Blarney collection — 

“Statues grouping that noble place in 
Of heathen goddesses most rare; 

Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar, 

All standing naked in the open air” 

But in the revised Palace all these have been 
left out, except the first four, and the architect 
has added a great 

mosaic choicely planned 
With cycles of the human tale 
Of this wide world, the times of every land 
So wrought, they will not fail . 

141 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

The 'people here , a beast of burden slow , 

Toil’d onward , prick’d with goads and stings; 

Here play’d a tiger , rolling to and fro 
The heads and crowns of kings; 

Here rose an athlete , strong to break or bind 
All force in bonds that might endure , 

And here once more like some sick man declin’d 
And trusted any cure . 

This mosaic covered the floor, and over these 
symbols of struggling humanity the vainglorious 
soul trod proudly as she went up to take her 
throne between the shining windows on which 
the faces of Plato and Verulam were blazoned. 
In the first edition there was a gorgeous de- 
scription of the banquet with which she re- 
galed herself; piles of flavorous fruits, musk- 
scented blooms, ambrosial pulps and juices, 
graceful chalices of curious wine, and a service 
of costly jars and bossed salvers. Thus she 
feasted in solitary state, and 

ere young night divine 
Crowned dying day with stars , 

Making sweet close of his delicious toils , 

She lit white streams of dazzling gas y 

And soft and fragrant flames of precious oils 
In moons of purple glass . 

This was written when the use of gas for illu- 
minating purposes was new, and considered 
142 


THE PALACE OF ART 


rather romantic. When the Palace was re- 
modelled the gas was turned off, and the supper 
was omitted. The soul was lifted above mere 
sensual pleasures, and sat listening to her own 
song and rejoicing in her royal seclusion. 

There are a great many minor alterations 
scattered through the poem. Some of them 
are mere changes of spelling, like Avilion, which 
becomes Avalon; and Cecily, which is changed 
to Cicely in 1842, and back again to Cecily in 
later editions; and sweet Europa’s mantle, 
which at first “blew unclasped,” and then 
lost its motion and got a touch of colour, be- 
coming “blue, unclasped,” and finally returned 
to its original form. (Some one has said that 
a painter would not have been forced to choose 
between colour and motion, for he could have 
made the mantle at once blue and blown by 
the wind.) Corrections and re-corrections such 
as these show how carefully Tennyson sought 
the perfection of language. 

But the most interesting change yet to be 
noted is directly due to Lockhart’s sharp criti- 
cism; at least, it was he who first pointed out 
the propriety of it, in his usual ironical way. 
“In this poem,” said he, “we first observed a 
stroke of art which we think very ingenious. 
No one who has ever written verses but must 
143 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, 
some striking phrase, which, however excellent 
in itself, did not exactly suit the place for which 
it was destined. How curiously does an author 
mould and remould the plastic verse in order 
to fit in the favourite thought; and when he 
finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal 
Trim says, any how> with what reluctance does 
he at last reject the intractable, but still cher- 
ished, offspring of his brain. Mr. Tennyson 
manages this delicate matter in a new and better 
way. He says, with great candour and sim- 
plicity, Tf this poem were not already too long 
I should have added the following stanzas / and 
then he adds them; or, T intended to have added 
something on statuary, but I found it very dif- 
ficult; but I have finished the statues of Elijah 
and Olympias; judge whether I have suc- 
ceeded;’ and then we have those two statues . 
This is certainly the most ingenious device 
that has ever come under our observation for 
reconciling the rigour of criticism with the in- 
dulgence of parental partiality.” 

The passages to which Mr. Lockhart alludes 
in this paragraph are the notes appended to 
pages 73 and 83 of the original edition. The 
former of these contains four stanzas on sculp- 
ture; the latter gives a description of one of 
144 


THE PALACE OF ART 


the favourite occupations of the self-indulgent 
soul, which is too fine to be left unquoted. 
Above the Palace a massive tower was built: 

Hither , when all the deep unsounded shies 
Were shuddering with silent stars , she clomb. 

And , as with optic glasses, her keen eyes 
Pierced thro * the mystic dome. 

Regions of lucid matter taking forms. 

Brushes of fire, hazy gleams, 

Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms 
Of suns, and starry streams. 

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars , 

That marvellous round of milky light 
Below Orion , and those double stars 
Whereof the one more bright 

Is circled by the other. 

But, however admirable these lines may seem, 
and however much we may regret their loss, 
there can be no doubt that the manner of their 
introduction was incongruous and absurd. It 
was like saying, “This Palace is not to have a 
hall of statues, but I will simply put on a small 
wing as a sample of what is not to be done. 
And there is no room for an observatory, but 
I will construct a little bit of one in order that 
you may see what it would have been like.” 
The poet himself seems to have recognised that 
the device was too “ingenious” to be dignified; 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


and in 1842 lie restored the symmetry of the Pal- 
ace by omitting the annex-buildings entirely. 

Now let us sum up the changes which have 
been made in the Palace since it was first con- 
structed. For this purpose it will be best to 
take Macmillan’s final edition of the text, and 
lay it beside the edition of 1833. 

In 1833 the poem, including the notes, con- 
tained eighty-three stanzas; in 1884 it has 
only seventy-five. Of the original number 
thirty-one have been entirely omitted — in other 
words, more than a third of the structure has 
been pulled down; and, in place of these, twenty- 
two new stanzas have been added, making a 
change of fifty-three stanzas. The fifty-two 
that remain have almost all been retouched and 
altered, so that very few stand to-day in the 
same shape which they had at the beginning. 
I suppose there is no other poem in the lan- 
guage, not even among the writings of Tenny- 
son, which has been worked over so carefully 
as this. 

But what is the significance of all this toil- 
some correction and remodelling? How does 
the study of it help us to a better comprehension 
of the poet? I think it shows us, first of all, 
the difference between the intellectual temper 
of Tennyson and that of a man who is possessed 
146 


THE PALACE OF ART 


by his theories, instead of possessing them, and 
whom they carry away into eccentricity. Sup- 
pose, for example, that such an article as Lock- 
hart’s had been written about Wordsworth’s 
early work, what would he have done? Or 
rather, for the case is not hypothetical but ac- 
tual, what did he do when the Philistines fell 
upon him? He replied to the attacks upon 
“Goody Blake” by publishing “Peter Bell”; he 
insisted upon using “the language of common 
life” even when he had nothing particular to 
say; he justified his poem upon an idiot and 
his pony, by producing a much longer poem 
upon a pedlar and his ass. 

But with Tennyson the effect of criticism 
was different. He had the saving sense of hu- 
mour, and could see the point of a clever jest 
even when it was directed against himself. He 
was willing to learn even from an enemy, and 
he counted no pains too great to take if only 
he could succeed in freeing his work from blem- 
ishes. The result of this, merely from a tech- 
nical point of view, is seen in “The Palace of 
Art.” It has gained in the rebuilding. The 
omission of unnecessary decoration is a good 
rule for the architect. Though we lose many 
rich and polished details, beautiful as the cap- 
itals of Corinthian pillars, their absence leaves 
147 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


the Palace standing more clear and noble be- 
fore the inward eye. 

But when we look at the alterations from a 
higher point, when we consider their effect 
upon the meaning of the poem, we see how 
great has been the gain. The new lines and 
stanzas are framed, almost without exception, 
with a wondrous skill to intensify the allegory. 
Touch after touch brings out the picture of 
the self-centred soul: the indifference that 
hardens into cruel contempt, the pride that 
verges on insanity, the insatiate lust of pleasure 
that devours all the world can give and then 
turns to feed upon itself, the empty darkness 
of a life without love. It seems as if the poet 
had felt more deeply, as he grew older, the need 
of making this picture clear and strong. Take 
for instance these two stanzas which he has 
added to the poem, describing the exultation 
of the soul in her exclusive joy: — 

0 God-like isolation which art mine , 

I can hut count thee perfect gain , 

What time I watch the darkening droves of swine 
That range on yonder plain . 

In filthy sloughs they roll a prurient skin , 

They graze and wallow, breed and sleep; 

And oft some brainless devil enters in , 

And drives them to the deep . 

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THE PALACE OF ART 


These lines are essential to the understanding 
of the poem. They touch the very core of the 
sin which defiled the Palace and destroyed the 
soul’s happiness. It was not merely that she 
loved beauty and music and fragrance; but 
that in her love for these she lost her moral 
sense, denied her human duties, and scorned, 
instead of pitying and helping, her brother- 
men who lived on the plain below. This is 
the sin of selfish pride, the sin which drives 
out the Christ because He eats with publicans 
and sinners, the unpardonable sin which makes 
its own hell. And it is just this sin, the poet 
says, that transforms the Palace of Art into a 
prison of despair. 

Is not this a lesson of which the age had need ? 
The chosen few were saying to their disciples 
that the world i§ a failure, humanity a mass of 
wretchedness, religion an outworn dream, — the 
only refuge for the elect of wealth and culture 
is in art. Retreat into your gardens of pleasure. 
Let the plague take the city. Delight your 
eyes with all things fair and sweet. So shall it 
be well with you and your soul shall dwell at 
ease while the swine perish. It is the gospel 
of pessimism which despairs of the common 
people because it despises them, and seeks to 
secrete a selfish happiness in “the worst of all 
149 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


possible worlds.” Nebuchadnezzar tried it in 
Babylon; Hadrian tried it in Rome; Solomon 
tried it in Jerusalem; and from all its palaces 
comes the same voice : vanitas vanitatum et omnia 
vanitas . 

It is not until the soul has learned a better 
wisdom, learned that the human race is one, 
and that none can really rise by treading on 
his brother-men, learned that true art is not 
the slave of luxury but the servant of human- 
ity, learned that happiness is born, not of the 
lust to possess and enjoy, but of the desire to 
give and to bless, — then, and not until then, 
when she brings others with her, can the soul 
find true rest in her Palace. 

Tennyson learned, as well as taught, this 
consecration of art. He was always an artist, 
but not for art’s sake; a lover of beauty, but 
also a lover of humanity; a singer whose music 
has brightened and blessed thousands of homes 
wherever the English tongue is spoken, and 
led the feet of young men and maidens, by some 
Orphean enchantment, into royal mansions and 
gardens, full of all things pure and lovely and 
of good report. 


150 


IV 

MILTON AND TENNYSON 

A COMPARISON AND A CONTRAST 

/COMPARISON has long been recognised as 
one of the fruitful methods of criticism. 
But in using this method one needs to remem- 
ber that it is the least obvious comparison which 
is often the truest and the most suggestive. 
The relationship of poets does not lie upon the 
surface; they receive their spiritual inheritance 
from beyond the lines of direct descent. Thus 
a poet may be most closely connected with 
one whose name we seldom join with his, and 
we may find his deepest resemblance to a man 
not only of another age, but of another school. 

Tennyson has been compared most frequently 
with Keats; sometimes, but falsely, with Shel- 
ley; and sometimes, more wisely, with Words- 
worth. The American critic, Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, who touched nothing that he did not 
adorn, has a chapter in his Victorian Poets on 
Tennyson and Theocritus. But the best com- 
parison, — one which runs far below the out- 
ward appearance into the profound affinities of 
genius, — yet remains to be carefully traced. 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

Among all poets, — certainly among all Eng- 
lish poets, — it seems to me that Tennyson’s 
next of kin is Milton. 

By this I do not mean to say that they are 
equally great or entirely alike. So far as per- 
fect likeness is concerned, there is no such thing 
among the sons of men. Every just compari- 
son involves a contrast. When we speak of 
greatness, Milton’s place as the second poet 
of England is not now to be called in question 
by any rival claim. It may be too much to 
assert that Tennyson holds the third place. 
Yet who is there that has a larger or more sub- 
stantial title than the author of In Memoriam 
and Idylls of the King? The conjunction of 
the names of Milton and Tennyson will be no 
unfamiliar event for the future; and for the 
present there is no better way of studying these 
two great poets than to lay their works side by 
side, and trace their lives through the hidden 
parallel of a kindred destiny. 

i 

There are two direct references to Milton in 
the works of Tennyson; and these we must 
examine first of all, in order that we may under- 
stand the attitude of his mind towards the elder 
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MILTON AND TENNYSON 


master. The first is in “The Palace of Art.” 
The royal dais on which the soul set up her 
intellectual throne is described as having above 
it four portraits of wise men. 

There deephaired Milton like an angel tall 
Stood limned , Shakespeare hland and mild , 

Grim Dante pressed his lips , and from the wall 
The bald blind Homer smiled. 

Thus read the verse in the 1833 edition; and 
it tells us the rank which Tennyson, in his 
twenty-fourth year, assigned to Milton. But 
there is hardly an instance in which the fineness 
of Tennyson’s self-correction is more happily 
illustrated than in the change which he has 
made in this passage. In the later editions it 
reads as follows: — 

For there was Milton like a seraph strong , 

Beside him, Shakespeare bland and mild; 

And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song 
And somewhat grimly smiled. 

And there the Ionian father of the rest; 

A million wrinkles carved his skin; 

A hundred winters snowed upon his breast , 

From cheek and throat and chin. 

Those who think that poetic expression is a 
matter of chance may well ponder upon this 
passage. Every alteration is an improvement; 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


and most of all the change in the first line. For 
now the poet has formed a true picture of Mil- 
ton’s genius, and shows a comprehension of its 
essential quality. Its sign is strength, but 
strength seraphic; not the rude, volcanic force 
of the Titan, but a power serene, harmonious, 
beautiful; a power of sustained flight, of far- 
reaching vision, of lofty eloquence, such as 
belongs to the seraphim alone. The word is 
not “angel,” for the angels are lower beings, 
followers in the heavenly host, some weak, 
and some fallen; nor is the word “cherub,” 
for the cherubim, in the ancient Hebrew doc- 
trine, are silent and mysterious creatures, not 
shaped like men, voiceless and inapproachable; 
but the word is “seraph,” for the seraphim 
hover on mighty wings about the throne of 
God, chanting His praise one to another, and 
bearing His messages from heaven to earth. 
This, then, is the figure which Tennyson chooses, 
with the precision of a great poet, to bring the 
spirit of Milton before us , — a seraph strong . 

The second reference is found among the 
“Experiments in Quantity” which were printed 
in the Cornhill Magazine in 1863. 

We have here the expression of Tennyson’s 
mature feeling, carefully considered, and ut- 
tered with the strength of a generous and clear 
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MILTON AND TENNYSON 

conviction; an utterance well worth weighing, 
not only for the perfection of its form, but also 
for the richness of its contents and the revela- 
tion which it makes of the poet’s own nature. 
Hear with what power and stateliness the tone- 
picture begins, rising at once to the height of 
the noble theme; — 

0, mighty-mouth’ d inventor of harmonies , 

0, skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity , 

God-gifted organ-voice of England , 

Milton , a name to resound for ages; 

Whose Titan angels , Gabriel, Abdiel, 

Starred from Jehovah’ s gorgeous armouries , 

Tower, as the deejp-domed empyrean 
Rings to the roar of an angel onset , — 

Me rather all that bowery loneliness 
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring 
And bloom profuse and cedar arches 
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean , 

Where some refulgent sunset of India 
Streams o’er a rich ambrosial ocean isle , 

And crimson-liued the stately palm-woods 
Whisper in odorous heights of even. 

Thus the brief ode finds its perfect close, 
the rich, full tones dying away in the prolonged 
period, as the strains of some large music are 
lost in the hush of twilight. But one other 
hand could have swept these chords and evoked 
these tones of majestic sweetness, — the hand 
of Milton himself. 


155 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


It was De Quincey who first spoke of the 
Miltonic movement as having the qualities of 
an organ voluntary. But the comparison which 
with him was little more than a fortunate and 
striking simile is transformed by the poet into 
a perfect metaphor. 

The great organ, pouring forth its melodious 
thunders, becomes a living thing, divinely dow- 
ered and filled with music, — an instrument no 
longer, but a voice , majestic, potent, thrilling 
the heart, — the voice of England. Swept on 
the flood of those great harmonies, the mighty 
hosts of angels clash together in heaven-shaking 
conflict. But it is the same full tide of music 
which flows down in sweetest, lingering cadence 
to wander through the cool groves and fragrant 
valleys of Paradise. Here the younger poet 
will more gladly dwell, finding a deeper delight 
in these solemn and tranquil melodies than in 
the roar and clang of battles, even though 
angelic. 

Is it not true ? True, not only that the organ 
voice has the twofold gift of beauty and gran- 
deur; true, not only that Tennyson has more 
sympathy with the loveliness of Eden than 
with the mingled splendours and horrors of 
the celestial battlefields; but true, also, that 
there is a no less potent and lasting charm in 
156 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Milton’s description of the beautiful than in 
his description of the sublime. I do not think 
that “L’Allegro,” “II Penseroso,” and “Comus” 
have any lower place in the world, or any less 
enduring life, than Paradise Lost . And even in 
that great epic there are no passages more worthy 
to be remembered, more fruitful of pure feelings 
and lofty thoughts, than those like the Hymn 
of Adam, or the description of the first evening 
in Eden, which show us the fairness and de- 
lightfulness of God’s world. We have forgotten 
this; we have thought so much of Milton’s 
strength and sublimity that we have ceased to 
recognise what is also true, that he, of all Eng- 
lish poets, is by nature the supreme lover of 
beauty. 

ii 

This, then, is the first point of vital sym- 
pathy between Tennyson and Milton: their 
common love of the beautiful, not only in na- 
ture, but also in art. And this we see most 
clearly in the youth and in the youthful writ- 
ings of the two poets. 

There is a resemblance in their early life. 
Both were born and reared in homes of modest 
comfort and leisure, under the blended influences 
of culture and religion. Milton’s father was a 
157 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


scrivener; deprived of his heritage because he 
obeyed his conscience to become a Protestant, 
but amassing a competence by his professional 
labour, he ordered his house well, softening 
and beautifying the solemnity of Puritan ways 
with music and literature. Tennyson was born 
in a country rectory, one of those fair homes 
of peace and settled order which are the pride 
and strength of England, — homes where “ plain 
living and high thinking” produce the noblest 
types of manhood. His father also, like Mil- 
ton’s, was a musician, and surrounded his seven 
sons with influences which gave them poetic 
tastes and impulses. It is interesting to see 
how large a part music played in the develop- 
ment of these two poets. Milton, even in his 
poverty and blindness, would have an organ 
in his house to solace his dark hours. Tenny- 
son, it is said, often asked one of his sisters 
to play to him while he composed; and in his 
dedication of the “ Songs of the Wrens 99 to Sir 
Ivor Guest, he speaks of himself as “ wedded to 
music.” 

It is of course no more than a coincidence 
that both of the young poets should have been 
students in the University of Cambridge. But 
there is something deeper in the similarity of 
their college lives and studies. A certain lofti- 
158 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


ness of spirit, an habitual abstraction of thought, 
marked them even then. They drank deep at 
the springs of ancient poesy. Not alone the 
form, but the spirit, of the classics became 
familiar to them. They were enamoured of 
the beauty of the old-world legends, the bright 
mythologies of Hellas, and Latium’s wondrous 
histories of gods and men. For neither of them 
was this love of the ancient poets a transient 
delight, a passing mood. It took strong hold 
upon them; it became a moulding power in 
their life and work. We can trace it in all 
their writings. Allusions, themes, illustrations, 
similes, forms of verse, echoes of thought, con- 
scious or unconscious imitations, — a thousand 
tokens remind us that we are still beneath the 
influence of the old masters of a vanished 
world, — 

“ The dead , but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns.” 

And here, again, we see a bond of sympathy 
between Tennyson and Milton: they are among 
the most learned, the most classical, of Eng- 
land’s poets. 

Following their lives beyond the university, 
we find that both of them came out into a period 
of study, of seclusion, of leisure, of poetical 
159 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

productiveness. Milton retired to his father’s 
house at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where 
he lived for five years. Tennyson’s home at 
Somersby, in Lincolnshire, was broken up by 
his father’s death in 1831; and after that, as 
Carlyle wrote to Emerson, “he preferred club- 
bing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live 
unpromoted and write Poems; . . . now here, 
now there; the family always within reach of 
London, never in it; he himself making rare 
and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade’s 
rooms.” The position and circumstances of 
the two young poets were alike. Both were 
withdrawn from the whirl and conflict of ac- 
tive life into a world of lovely forms, sweet 
sounds, and enchanting dreams; both fed their 
minds with the beauty of nature and of ancient 
story, charmed by the music of divine phi- 
losophy, and by songs of birds filling the sweet 
English air at dawn or twilight; both loved to 
roam at will over hill and dale and by the wan- 
dering streams; to watch the bee, with honeyed 
thigh, singing from flower to flower, and catch 
the scent of violets hidden in the green; to 
hear the sound of far-off bells swinging over the 
wide-watered shore, and listen to the sighing 
of the wind among the trees, or the murmur of 
the waves on the river-bank; to pore and dream 
160 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


through long night-watches over the legends of 
the past, until the cold winds woke the gray- 
eyed morn, and the lark’s song startled the dull 
night from her watch-tower in the skies. They 
dwelt as idlers in the land, but it was a glorious 
and fruitful idleness, for they were reaping 

The harvest of a quiet eye 

That broods and sleeps on his own heart . 

How few and brief, and yet how wonderful, 
are the results of these peaceful years. “L’Al- 
legro,” “II Penseroso,” “Arcades,” “Comus,” 
“Lycidas,” “Isabel,” “Recollections of the 
Arabian Nights,” “Ode to Memory,” “The Dy- 
ing Swan,” “The Palace of Art,” “A Dream of 
Fair Women,” “Mariana,” “The Lady of Sha- 
lott,” “The Lotos-Eaters,” “(Enone,” — these 
are poems to be remembered, read and re-read 
with ever fresh delight, perfect things of their 
kind. Grander poems, more passionate, more 
powerful, are many; but there are none in which 
the pure love of beauty, Greek in its healthy 
symmetry, Christian in its reverent earnestness, 
has produced work so complete and exquisite 
as the early poems of Milton and Tennyson. 

Their best qualities are the same. They are 
marked by the same exact observation of Na- 
ture, the same sensitive perception of her most 
161 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


significant aspects, the same charm of simple 
and musical description. Read Tennyson’s 
“Ode to Memory,” — for instance, the descrip- 
tion of the poet’s home : — 

Come from the woods that belt the gray hillside , 

The seven elms y the poplars four 
That stand beside my father's door; 

And chiefly from the brook that loves 
To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand 
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves , 

Drawing into his narrow earthen urn , 

In every elbow and turn , 

The filtered tribute of the rough woodland . 

01 hither lead my feet! 

Pour round my ears the livelong bleat 
Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds 
Upon the ridged wolds , 

When the first matin-song hath waken'd loud y 
Over the dark dewy earth forlorn , 

What time the amber morn 

Forth gushes from beneath a low-hung cloud. 

Compare with this some lines from “L’ Al- 
legro”: — 

To hear the lark begin his flight , 

And singing startle the dull night 
From his watch-tower in the skies t 
Till the dappled dawn doth rise! 

Some time walking, not unseen , 

By hedge-row elms , on hillocks green y 

162 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Right against the eastern gate 
Where the great sun begins his state , 

Rob'd in flames and amber light , 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight; 

While the ploughman , near at hand , 

Whistles o'er the furrow'd land , 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe , 

And the mower whets his scythe , 

And every shepherd tells his tale 
Under the hawthorn in the dale. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures 
While the landscape round it measures; 

Russet lawns and fallows gray , 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray; 

Mountains on whose barren breast 
The labouring clouds do often rest; 

Meadows trim with daisies pied , 

Shallow brooks and rivers wide . 

Here are the same breadth of vision, delicacy 
of touch, atmospheric effect; the same sensi- 
tiveness to the simplest variations of light and 
sound; the same power to shed over the quiet 
scenery of the English country the light of an 
ideal beauty. It is an art beyond that of the 
landscape painter, and all the more perfect 
because so well concealed. 

Another example will show us the similarity 
of the two poets in their more purely imagina- 
tive work, the description of that which they 
have seen only with the dreaming eyes of fancy. 

163 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

Take the closing song, or epilogue of the At- 
tendant Spirit, in “Comus”: — 


To the ocean now I fly 

And those happy climes that lie 

Up in the broad fields of the sky . 

There I suck the liquid air , 

All amidst the gardens fair 
Of Hesperus, and his daughters three. 

That sing about the golden tree: 

Along the crisped shades and bowers 
Revels the spruce and jocund Spring; 

The graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours 
Thither all their bounties bring; 

There eternal summer dwells. 

And west-winds, with musky wing , 

About the cedam alleys fling 
Nard and cassia’s balmy smells . 

Iris there with humid bow 
Waters the odour ous banks, that blow 
Flowers of more mingled hue 
Than her purfled scarf can shew. 

And drenches with Elysian dew 
Beds of hyacinths and roses . 

Compare this with Tennyson’s “ Recollec- 
tions of the Arabian Nights”: — 

Thence thro’ the garden I was drawn — 

A realm of pleasance , many a mound. 

And many a shadow-chequer’ d lawn 
Full of the city’s stilly sound , 

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MILTON AND TENNYSON 

And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round 
The stately cedar , tamarisks , 

Thick rosaries of scented thorn. 

Tall orient shrubs , and obelisks 
Graven with emblems of the time , 

In honour of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid . 

With dazed vision unawares 
From the long alley 9 s latticed shade 
Emerged , I came upon the great 
Pavilion of the Caliphat. 

Right to the carven cedam doors 
Flung inward over spangled floors. 

Broad-based flights of marble stairs 
Ran up with golden balustrade , „ 

After the fashion of the time , 

And humour of the golden prime 
Of good Haroun Alraschid . 

Here is more than a mere resemblance of words 
and themes, more than an admiring imitation 
or echoing of phrases; it is an identity of taste, 
spirit, temperament. 

But the resemblance of forms also is here. 
We can trace it in such a minor trait as the 
skilful construction and use of double-words. 
This has often been noticed as a distinguish- 
ing feature of Tennyson’s poetry. But Milton 
uses them almost as freely and even more magi- 
cally. In “Comus,” which has a few more 
165 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


than a thousand lines, there are fifty-four double- 
epithets; in “L’Allegro” there are sixteen to 
a hundred and fifty lines; in “II Penseroso” 
there are eleven to one hundred and seventy 
lines. Tennyson’s “Ode to Memory,” with a 
hundred and twenty lines, has fifteen double- 
words; “Mariana,” with eighty lines, has nine; 
the “Lotos-Eaters,” with two hundred lines, 
has thirty-two. If I should choose at random 
fifty such words from the early poems, I do 
not think that any one, not knowing them by 
heart, could tell at first glance which were Mil- 
ton’s and which Tennyson’s. Let us try the 
experiment with the following list: — 

Low-thoughted, empty-vaulted, rosy-white, 
rosy-bosomed, violet-embroidered, dew-im- 
pearled, over-exquisite, long-levelled, mild-eyed, 
white-handed, white-breasted, pure-eyed, sin- 
worn, self -consumed, self-profit, close-curtained, 
low-browed, ivy-crowned, gray-eyed, far-beam- 
ing, pale-eyed, down-steering, flower-inwoven, 
dewy-dark, moon-loved, smooth-swarded, quick- 
falling, slow-dropping, coral-paven, lily-cradled, 
amber-dropping, thrice-great, dewy-feathered, 
purple-spiked, foam-fountains, sand-built, night- 
steeds, full-flowing, sable-stoled, sun-steeped, 
star-led, pilot-stars, full-juiced, dew-fed, brazen- 
166 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


headed, wisdom-bred, star-strown, low-em- 
bowed, iron-worded, globe-filled. 

It will puzzle the reader to distinguish with 
any degree of certainty the authorship of these 
words. And this seems the more remarkable 
when we remember that there are two cen- 
turies of linguistic development and changing 
fashions of poetic diction between “Comus” 
and “(Enone.” 

Not less remarkable is the resemblance be- 
tween Tennyson and Milton in their delicate 
yet wholesome sympathy with Nature, their 
perception of the relation of her moods and 
aspects to the human heart. This, in fact, is 
the keynote of “L’ Allegro” and “II Penseroso.” 
The same world, seen under different lights and 
filled with different sounds, responds as deeply 
to the joyous, as to the melancholy, spirit. There 
is a profound meaning, a potent influence, in 
the outward shows of sky and earth. While 
the Lady of Shalott dwells in her pure seclusion, 
the sun shines, the lily blossoms on the river’s 
breast, and the blue sky is unclouded; but 
when she passes the fatal line, and the curse 
has fallen on her, then 

In the stormy eastwind straining 
The pale yellow woods are waning , 

167 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


The broad stream in his banks complaining , 
Heavily the low sky raining , 

Over tower'd Camelot . 

Thus, also, when the guilty pair in Eden had 
transgressed that sole command on which their 
happiness depended, — 

Sky lowered , and muttering thunder , some sad drops 
Wept at completing of the mortal sin, 

Ruskin says that this is “the pathetic fal- 
lacy”; for, as a matter of fact, the clouds do 
not weep, nor do the rivers complain, and he 
maintains that to speak of them as if they did 
these things is to speak with a certain degree 
of falsehood which is unworthy of the highest 
kind of art. But Ruskin may say what he 
pleases about Milton and Tennyson without 
much likelihood of persuading any sane person 
that their poetry is not profoundly true to Na- 
ture, — and most true precisely in its recognition 
of her power to echo and reflect the feelings of 
man. All her realities are but seemings; and 
she does seem to weep with them that weep, 
and to rejoice with them that do rejoice. 
Nothing can be more real than that. The 
chemistry of the sun is no more real than its 
message of joy; the specific gravity of the rain 
is of no greater consequence than its message 
168 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


of sadness. And for the poet the first necessity 
is that he should be able to feel and interpret 
the sentiment of natural objects. 

The art of landscape-poetry, I take it, con- 
sists in this: the choice and description of such 
actual images of external nature as are capable 
of being grouped and coloured by a dominant 
idea or feeling. Of this art the most perfect 
masters in English are Tennyson and Milton. 
And here I have reversed the order of the names, 
because I reckon that on this point Tennyson 
stands first. Take, for example, the little 
poem on “ Mariana,” — that wonderful variation 
on the theme of loneliness, suggested by a 
single line in Measure for Measure . Here the 
thought is the weariness of waiting for one who 
does not come. The garden has grown black 
with moss, the nails in the wall are rusted, the 
thatch is full of weeds on the forsaken house; 
the moat is crusted over with creeping marsh- 
plants, the solitary poplar on the fen trembles 
eternally in the wind; slowly pass the night- 
hours, marked by the distant sounds of crow- 
ing cocks and lowing oxen; slower still the 
hours of day, while the fly buzzes on the win- 
dow-pane, the mouse shrieks in the wainscot, 
the sparrow chirps on the roof; everything in 
the picture belongs to a life sunken in mo- 
169 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


notony, lost in sadness, forgotten as a dead man 
out of mind. Even the light that falls into the 
moated grange is full of dust. 

But most she loathed the hour 

When the thick-moted sunbeam lay 
Athwart the chambers, and the day 
Was sloping toward his western bower . 

Then, said she, “I am very dreary. 

He will not come,” she said; 

She wept, “I am aweary, aweary. 

Oh God, that I were dead” 

Now all this is perfect painting of the things 
in nature which respond exactly to the sense 
of depression and solitude and intolerable, pro- 
longed neglect, in a human soul. For an illus- 
tration of the opposite feeling turn to the de- 
scription of the May morning in “The Gar- 
dener’s Daughter.” The passage is too long 
to quote here; but it is beyond doubt one of 
the most rich and joyous pictures in English 
verse. The world seems to be overflowing with 
blossom and song as the youth draws near to 
the maiden. It is love set to landscape. And 
yet there is not a single false touch; all is true 
and clear and precise, down to the lark’s song 
which grows more rapid as he sinks towards 
his nest, and the passing cloud whose moisture 
brings out the sweet smell of the flowers. 

170 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Another trait common to the earlier poems 
of Milton and Tennyson is their purity of tone. 
They are sensuous, — indeed Milton declared that 
all good poetry must be sensuous, — but never 
for a moment, in a single line, are they sensual. 

The Lady in “Comus” is the virginal em- 
bodiment of Milton’s youthful ideal of virtue, 
clothed with the fairness of opening woman- 
hood, armed with the sun-clad power of chas- 
tity. Darkness and danger cannot 

Stir the constant mood of her calm thoughts. 

Evil things have no power upon her, but shrink 
abashed from her presence. 

So dear to heaven is saintly chastity 
That when a soul is found sincerely so, 

A thousand liveried angels lackey her. 

Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt; 

And in clear dream and solemn vision. 

Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear. 

Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begins to cast a beam on iti outward shape. 

The unpolluted temple of the mind. 

And turns it by degrees to the souVs essence. 

Till all be made immortal. 

And now, beside this loveliest Lady, bring Isa- 
bel, with those 

Eyes not doum-dropt nor over-bright, but fed 
With the clear-pointed flame of chastity , 

171 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Clear , without heat , undying, tended by 
Pure vestal thoughts in the translucent Jane 
Of her still spirit. 

Bring also her who, for her people’s good, 
passed naked on her palfrey through the city 
streets, — Godiva, who 

Rode forth, clothed on with chastity; 

The deep air listen'd round her as she rode , 

And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. 

These are sisters, perfect in purity as in beauty, 
and worthy to be enshrined in the love of youth. 
They are ideals which draw the heart, not down- 
ward, but upward by the power of "das ewig 
Weibliche 

There are many other points of resemblance 
between the early poems of Milton and Tenny- 
son: echoes of thought like that sonnet, begin- 
ning 

Chech every outflash, every ruder sally 

Of thought and speech : speak low, and give up wholly 

Thy spirit to mild-minded melancholy , — 

which seems almost as if it might have been 
written by “II Penseroso”: coincidences of 
taste and reading such as the fondness for the 
poet to whom Milton alludes as 

Him that left half told 
The story of Cambuscan bold , 

172 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Of Camball and of Algarsife 
And who had Canace to wife y — 

and whom Tennyson calls 

Dan Chaucer , the first warbler , whose sweet breath 
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 
The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
With sounds that echo still: 

likenesses of manner such as the imitation of 
the smooth elegiac poets in “Lycidas” and 
“(Enone.” But a critic who wishes his con- 
clusions to be accepted with a sense of grati- 
tude must leave his readers to supply some 
illustrations for themselves. And this I will 
be prudent enough to do; expressing only the 
opinion that those who study the subject care- 
fully will find that one of the closest kinships 
in literature is that between the early poems 
of Milton and Tennyson. 

hi 

There are two causes which have power to 
change the natural or premeditated course of 
a man’s life, — the shock of a great outward 
catastrophe, and the shock of a profound in- 
ward grief. 

When the former comes, it shatters all his 
cherished plans, renders the execution of his 
173 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


favourite projects impossible, directs the cur- 
rent of his energy into new channels, plunges 
him into conflict with circumstances, turns his 
strength against corporeal foes, and produces 
a change of manner, speech, life, which is at 
once evident and tangible. With the latter, 
it is different. The inward shock brings with 
it no alteration of the visible environment, 
leaves the man where he stood before, to the 
outward eye unchanged, free to tread the same 
paths and pursue the same designs; and yet, 
in truth, not free; most deeply, though most 
subtly, changed; for the soul, shaken from her 
serene repose, and losing the self-confidence of 
youth, either rises into a higher life or sinks 
into a lower; meeting the life-and-death ques- 
tions which haunt the gloom of a deep personal 
bereavement, she finds an answer either in the 
eternal Yes or in the eternal No; and though 
form and accent and mode of speech remain 
the same, the thoughts and intents of the heart 
are altered forever. 

To Milton came the outward conflict; to 
Tennyson, the inward grief. As we follow them 
beyond the charmed circle of their early years, 
we must trace the parallel between them, if 
indeed we can find it at all, far below the sur- 
face; although even yet we shall see some ex- 
174 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


ternal resemblances amid many and strong 
contrasts. 

Milton’s catastrophe was the civil war, sweep- 
ing over England like a flood. But the fate 
which involved him in it was none other than 
his own conscience. This it was that drew him, 
by compulsion more strong than sweet, from 
the florid literary hospitality of Italian mutual 
laudation societies into the vortex of tumultuous 
London, made him 4 ‘lay aside his singing robes” 
for the heavy armour of the controversialist, 
and leave his “calm and pleasant solitariness, 
fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to 
embark on a troubled sea of noises and harsh 
disputes.” His conscience, I say, not his tastes: 
all these led him the other way. But an irre- 
sistible sense of duty caught him, and dragged 
him, as it were by the neck, to the verge of the 
precipice, and flung him down into the thick 
of the stormiest conflict that England had ever 
seen. 

Once there, he does not retreat. He quits 
himself like a man. He is not a Puritan. He 
loves many things that the grim Puritans hate, 
— art, music, fine literature, nature, beauty. 
But one thing he loves more than all, — liberty ! 
For that he will fight, — fight on the Puritan 
side, fight against anybody, desperately, per- 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


tinaciously, with grand unconsciousness of pos- 
sible defeat. He catches the lust of combat, 
and “drinks delight of battle with his peers.” 
The serene poet is transformed into a thunder- 
ing pamphleteer. He launches deadly bolts 
against tyranny in Church, in State, in society. 
He strikes at the corrupt clergy, at the false, 
cruel king, at the self-seeking bigots disguised 
as friends of freedom. He is absorbed in strife. 
Verse is forgotten. But one brief strain of true 
poetry bursts from him at the touch of per- 
sonal grief. The rest is all buried, choked down, 
concealed. The full stream of his energy, un- 
stinted, undivided, flows into the struggle for 
freedom and truth; and even when the war is 
ended, the good cause betrayed by secret ene- 
mies and foolish friends, the freedom of England 
sold back into the hands of the treacherous 
Stuarts, Milton fights on, like some guerilla 
captain in a far mountain region, who has not 
heard, or will not believe, the news of surrender. 

The blow which fell on Tennyson was in- 
ward. The death of Arthur Henry Hallam, in 
1833, caused no convulsion in English politics, 
brought no visible disaster to Church or State, 
sent only the lightest and most transient ripple 
of sorrow across the surface of society; but to 
the heart of one man it was the shock of a spiri- 
176 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


tual earthquake, upheaving the foundations of 
life and making the very arch of heaven tremble. 
Bound to Hallam by one of those rare friend- 
ships passing the love of women, Tennyson 
felt his loss in the inmost fibres of his being. 
The world was changed, darkened, filled with 
secret conflicts. The importunate questions 
of human life and destiny thronged upon his 
soul. The ideal peace, the sweet, art-satisfied 
seclusion, the dreams of undisturbed repose, 
became impossible for him. He must fight, 
not for a party cause, but for spiritual freedom 
and immortal hopes, not against incorporate 
and embattled enemies, but against unseen 
foes, — thrones, principalities, and powers of 
darkness. 

We have some record of this strife in poems 
like “Two Voices,” and “The Vision of Sin.” 
The themes here treated are the deepest and 
most serious that can engage the mind. The 
worth of life, the significance of suffering, the 
reality of virtue, the existence of truth, the 
origin and end of evil, human responsibility. 
Divine goodness, mysteries of the now and the 
hereafter, — these are the problems with which 
the poet is forced to deal, and he dares to deal 
with them face to face. I will not say that he 
finds, as yet, the true solution; there is a more 
177 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


profound and successful treatment of the same 
problems to follow in In Memoriam. But I 
think that, so far as they go, these poems are 
right and true; and in them, enlightened by 
grief, strengthened by inward combat, the poet 
has struck a loftier note than can be heard in 
the beautiful poems of his youth. 

For this, at least, is clear. The poet has now 
become a man. The discipline of sorrow has 
availed. Life is real and earnest to him. He 
grapples with the everlasting facts of humanity. 
Men and women are closer to him. He can 
write poems like “Dora,” “Ulysses,” “St. Sim- 
eon Stylites,” as wonderful for their differ- 
ence in tone and subject as for their intense 
humanity and absolute truth to nature. He 
has learned to feel a warm sympathy with 

Men, my brothers , men , the workers: 

to care for all that touches their welfare; to re- 
joice in the triumphs of true liberty; to thun- 
der in scorn and wrath against the social tyran- 
nies that crush the souls of men, and 

The social lies that warp us from the living truth. 

It is true that there is no actual and visible 
conflict, no civil war raging to engulf him. He 
is not called upon to choose between his love 
178 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


of poetry and his love of country, nor to lay 
aside his singing-robes even for a time. It is 
his fortune, or misfortune, to have fallen upon 
an age of prosperity and settled government. 
But in that great unseen warfare which is ever 
waging between truth and error, right and wrong, 
freedom and oppression, light and darkness, he 
bears his part and bears it well, by writing such 
poems as “Locksley Hall,” “Sea Dreams,” 
“Enoch Arden,” “Aylmer’s Field”; and these 
entitle him to high rank as a poet of humanity. 

Are they then so far apart, Milton and Tenny- 
son, the Latin Secretary of Cromwell and the 
Poet Laureate of Queen Victoria, — are they so 
far apart in the spiritual activity of their lives 
as their circumstances seem to place them? 
Are they as unlike in the substance as they are 
in the form of their utterance on the great ques- 
tions of life? I think not. Even here, where 
the lines of their work seem to diverge most 
widely, we may trace some deep resemblances, 
under apparent differences. 

It is a noteworthy fact that a most important 
place in the thought and writing of both of 
these men has been occupied by the subject 
of marriage. How many of Tennyson’s poems 
are devoted to this theme ! “The Miller’s 
Daughter,” “The Lord of Burleigh,” “Lady 
179 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Clare,” “Edwin Morris,” “The Brook,” “The 
Gardener’s Daughter,” “Love and Duty,” 
“Locksley Hall,” The Princess , Maud , “Enoch 
Arden,” “Aylmer’s Field,” “The Golden Sup- 
per,” “The Window,” “The First Quarrel,” 
“The Wreck,” “The Flight,” and the Idylls of 
the King , all have the thought of union be- 
tween man and woman, and the questions 
which arise in connection w r ith it, at their root. 

In “The Coming of Arthur,” Tennyson makes 
his chosen hero rest all his power upon a happy 
and true marriage : — 

What happiness to reign a lonely king 

Vext with waste dreams? For saving I he join’d 

To her that is the fairest under heaven , 

I seem as nothing in the mighty world , 

And cannot will my will nor work my work 
Wholly , nor make myself in mine own realm 
Victor and lord . But were I join’d with her , 

Then might we live together as one life , 

And reigning with one will in everything. 

Have power on this dark land to lighten it. 

And power on this dead world to make it live . 

Compare with this Adam’s complaint in Para- 
dise : — 

In solitude 

What happiness? Who can enjoy alone? 

Or all enjoying what contentment find ? 

his demand for a companion equal with himself, 
180 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


‘‘fit to participate all rational delight”; and 
his description of his first sight of Eve: 

She disappeared and left me dark . I wak’d 

To find her, or forever to deplore 

Her loss , and other pleasures all abjure . 

Those four tremendous pamphlets on Divorce 
with which Milton horrified his enemies and 
shocked his friends, have underlying all their 
errors and extravagances the great doctrine 
that a genuine marriage must be a true com- 
panionship and union of souls — a doctrine 
equally opposed to the licentious, and to the 
conventional, view of wedlock. 

This is precisely Tennyson’s position. His 
bitterest invectives are against marriages of 
convenience and avarice. He praises “that 
true marriage, that healthful and holy family 
life, which has its roots in mutual affection, in 
mutual fitness, and which is guarded by a con- 
stancy as strong as heaven’s blue arch and yet as 
spontaneous as the heart-beats of a happy child.” 
But in praising this, Tennyson speaks of what 
he has possessed and known : Milton could have 
spoken only of what he had desired and missed 
save for one brief interval. A world-wide differ- 
ence, more than enough to account for anything 
of incompleteness in Milton’s views of women. 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

What injustice the world has done him on 
this point! Married at an age when a man 
who has preserved the lofty ideals and per- 
sonal purity of youth is peculiarly liable to 
deception, to a woman far below him in char- 
acter and intellect, a pretty fool utterly unfitted 
to take a sincere and earnest view of life or to 
sympathise with him in his studies; deserted 
by her a few weeks after the wedding-day; met 
by stubborn refusal and unjust reproaches in 
every attempt to reclaim and reconcile her; 
accused by her family of disloyalty in politics, 
and treated as if he were unworthy of honour- 
able consideration; what wonder that his heart 
experienced a great revulsion, that he began 
to doubt the reality of such womanhood as he 
had described and immortalised in “Cornus,” 
that he sought relief in elaborating a doctrine 
of divorce which should free him from the un- 
worthy and irksome tie of a marriage which 
was in truth but an empty mockery? That 
divorce doctrine which he propounded in the 
heat of personal indignation, disguised even 
from himself beneath a mask of professedly 
calm philosophy, was surely false, and we can- 
not but condemn it. But can we condemn his 
actual conduct, so nobly inconsistent with his 
own theory? Can we condemn the man, as 
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MILTON AND TENNYSON 

we see him forgiving and welcoming his wife 
driven by stress of poverty and danger to re- 
turn to the home which she had frivolously 
forsaken; welcoming also, and to the best of 
his ability sheltering, her whole family of 
Philistines, who were glad enough, for all their 
pride, to find a refuge from the perils of civil 
war in the house of the despised schoolmaster 
and Commonwealth-man; bearing patiently, 
for his wife’s sake, with their weary presence 
and shallow talk in his straitened dwelling- 
place until the death of the father-in-law, whose 
sense of honour was never strong enough to 
make him pay one penny of his daughter’s 
promised marriage-portion, — can we condemn 
Milton as we see him acting thus? And as 
we see him, after a few months of happy union 
with a second wife, again left a widower with 
three daughters, two of whom, at least, never 
learned to love him; blind, poor, with few 
friends; disliked and robbed by his undutiful 
children, who did not scruple to cheat him in 
the marketings, sell his books to the rag-pickers, 
and tell the servants that the best news they 
could hear would be the news of their father’s 
death; forced at length in very instinct of self- 
protection to take as his third wife a plain, 
honest woman who would be faithful and kind 
183 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


in her care of him and his house; can we won- 
der if, after this experience, he thought some- 
what doubtfully of women ? 

But of woman, woman as God made her and 
meant her to be, woman as she is in the true 
purity and unspoiled beauty of her nature, he 
never thought otherwise than nobly and rev- 
erently. His thought is expressed in his sonnet 
to his second wife, in whom for one fleeting 
year his heart tasted the best of earthly joys, 
the joy of a perfect companionship, but who 
was lost to him in the birth of her first child: — 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint 
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave , 

Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave , 
Rescued from death by force though pale and faint. 
Mine , as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint 
Purification in the old Law did save. 

And such as yet once more 1 trust to have 
Full sight of her in Heaven, without restraint , 

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind; 

Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight 
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined 
So clear as in no face with more delight. 

But 0, as to embrace me she inclined, 

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 

There is no more beautiful and heartfelt praise 
of perfect womanhood in all literature than 
this: Tennyson has never written with more 
unfeigned worship of wedded love. 

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MILTON AND TENNYSON 

It is true, indeed, that Milton declares that 
woman is inferior to man “in the mind and 
inward faculties,” but he follows this declara- 
tion with the most exquisite description of her 
peculiar excellences: 

When I approach 
Her loveliness , so absolute she seems 
And in herself complete , so well to knoio 
Her own , that what she wills to do or say 
Seems wisest , virtuousest , discreetest , best : 
Authority and reason on her wait 
As one intended first, not after made 
Occasionally ; and to consummate all , 

Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat 
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe 
About her as a guard angelic placed. 

It is true that he teaches, in accordance with 
the doctrine of the Bible, that it is the wife’s 
duty to obey her husband, to lean upon, and 
follow, his larger strength when it is exercised 
in wisdom. But he never places the woman 
below the man, always at his side; the divinely- 
dowered consort and counterpart, not the same, 
but equal, supplying his deficiencies and solac- 
ing his defects. 

His likeness, his fit help , his other self, 
with whom he may enjoy 


Union of mind or in us both one soul. 
185 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


And love like this 

Leads up to heaven; is both the way and guide . 

Compare these teachings with those of Tenny- 
son in The Princess , where under a veil of 
irony, jest mixed with earnest, he shows the 
folly of the modern attempt to change woman 
into a man in petticoats, describes the female 
lecturer and the sweet girl graduates in delight- 
fully absurd aspects, overthrows the visionary 
towers of the Female College with a baby’s 
touch, and closes the most good-humoured of 
satires with a picture of the true relationship 
of man and woman, so beautiful and so wise 
that neither poetry nor philosophy can add a 
word to it. 

For woman is not undevelopt man , 

But diverse: could we make her as the man , 

Sweet Love were slain; his dearest bond is this , 

Not like to like , but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow; 

The man be more of woman , she of man; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height , 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 

She mental breadth , nor fail in childward care , 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; 

Till at the last she set herself to man 
Like perfect music unto noble words. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men: 

Then reign the world’s great bridals , chaste and calm: 

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MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 

May these things he! 

A second point in which we may trace a deep 
resemblance between Milton and Tennyson is 
their intense love of country. This is not al- 
ways a prominent characteristic of great poets. 
In Goethe we see the cold indifference of the 
self-centred artistic mind, careless of his coun- 
try’s degradation and enslavement, provided 
only the all-conquering Napoleon will leave 
him his poetic leisure and freedom. In Byron 
we see the wild rebelliousness of the poet of 
passion, deserting, disowning, and reviling his 
native land in the sullen fury of personal anger. 
But Milton and Tennyson are true patriots — 
Englishmen to the heart’s core. They do not 
say, “My country, right or wrong!” They 
protest in noble scorn against all kinds of 
tyrannies and hypocrisies. They are not bound 
in conscienceless servility to any mere political 
party. They are the partisans of England, be- 
cause England to them means freedom, justice, 
righteousness, Christianity. 

Milton sees her “rousing herself like a strong 
man after sleep, and shaking her invincible 
locks;” or “as an eagle, mewing her mighty 
youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the 
full midday beam; purging and scaling her 
long-abused sight at the fountain itself of 
187 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of 
timorous and flocking birds, with those also 
that love the twilight, flutter about amazed 
at what she means, and in their envious gabble 
would prognosticate a year of sects and 
schisms.” 

Tennyson sings her praise as 

the land that freemen till , 

That sober-suited Freedom chose , 

The land where , girt with friends or foes, 

A man may speak the thing he will. 

He honours and reveres the Queen, but it is 
because her power is the foundation and de- 
fence of liberty; because of her it may be said 
that 

Statesmen at her council met 

Who knew the season when to take 
Occasion by the hand , and make 
The bounds of freedom under yet , 

By shaping some august decree , 

Which kept her throne unshaken still, 
Broad-bas'd upon the peopled will. 

And compass'd by the inviolate sea. 

Think you he would have written thus if Charles 
Stuart, bribe-taker, extortioner, tyrant, dig- 
nified and weak betrayer of his best friends, 
had been his sovereign? His own words tell 
us on which side he would have stood in that 
188 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


great revolt. In the verses written on “The 
Third of February, 1852,” he reproaches the 
Parliament for their seeming purpose to truckle 
to Louis Napoleon, after the coup d'etat , and 
cries: 

Shall we fear him ? Our own we never feared. 

From our first Charles by force we wrung our claims. 
Pricked by the Papal spur, we reared. 

We flung the burthen of the second James. 

And again, in the poem entitled “England and 
America in 1782,” he justifies the American 
Revolution as a lesson taught by England her- 
self, and summons his country to exult in the 
freedom of her children. 

But Thou, rejoice with liberal joy! 

Lift up thy rocky face. 

And shatter, when the storms are black , 

In many a streaming torrent back. 

The seas that shock thy base . 

Whatever harmonies of law 
The growing world assume. 

The work is thine, — the single note 
From the deep chord that Hampden smote 
Will vibrate to the doom. 

Here is the grand Miltonic ring, not now dis- 
turbed and roughened by the harshness of op- 
position, the bitterness of disappointment, the 
sadness of despair, but rounded in the calm 
189 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


fulness of triumph. “The whirligig of Time 
brings in his revenges.” The bars of oppression 
are powerless to stay the tide of progress. 

The old order changeth , yielding jplace to new, 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways . 

If Milton were alive to-day he would find 
his ideals largely realised; freedom of worship, 
freedom of the press, freedom of education, 
no longer things to be fought for, but things 
to be enjoyed; the principle of popular repre- 
sentation firmly settled in the constitution of 
the British monarchy (which Tennyson calls 
“a crowned Republic/’) and the spirit of “the 
good old cause,” the people’s cause which seemed 
lost when the second Charles came back, now 
victorious and guiding the destinies of the na- 
tion into a yet wider and more glorious liberty. 

But what would be the effect of such an en- 
vironment upon such a character as his ? What 
would Milton have been in the nineteenth cen- 
tury? If we can trust the prophecies of his 
early years; if we can regard the hints of his 
own preferences and plans, from whose fruition 
a stern sense of duty, like a fiery-sworded angel, 
barred him out, we must imagine the course 
of his life, the development of his genius, as 
something very different from what they ac- 
190 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 

tually were. An age of peace and prosperity, 
the comfort and quietude of a well-ordered 
home, freedom to pursue his studious researches 
and cultivate his artistic tastes to the full, an 
atmosphere of liberal approbation and encour- 
agement, — circumstances such as these would 
have guided his life and work into a much closer 
parallel with Tennyson, and yet they never 
could have made him other than himself. For 
his was a seraphic spirit, strong, indomitable, 
unalterable; and even the most subtile influence 
of surroundings could never have destroyed or 
changed him fundamentally. So it was true, as 
Macaulay has said, that “from the Parliament 
and from the court, from the conventicle and 
from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and 
sepulchral rites of the Roundheads, and from 
the Christmas revel of the hospitable cavalier, 
his nature selected and drew to itself whatever 
was great and good, while it rejected all the 
base and pernicious ingredients by which these 
finer elements were defiled.” And yet the very 
process of rejection had its effect upon him. 
The fierce conflicts of theology and politics in 
which for twenty years he was absorbed left 
their marks upon him for good and for evil. 
They tried him as by fire. They brought out 
all his strength of action and endurance. They 
191 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


made his will like steel. They gave him the 
God-like power of one who has suffered to the 
uttermost. But they also disturbed, at least 
for a time, the serenity of his mental processes. 
They made the flow of his thought turbulent 
and uneven. They narrowed, at the same time 
that they intensified, his emotions. They made 
him an inveterate controversialist, whose God 
must argue and whose angels were debaters. 
They crushed his humour and his tenderness. 
Himself, however, the living poet, the supreme 
imaginatidn, the seraphic utterance, they did 
not crush, but rather strengthened. And so it 
came to pass that in him we have the miracle 
of literature, — the lost river of poetry springing 
suddenly, as at Divine command, from the 
bosom of the rock, no trickling and diminished 
rill, but a sweeping flood, laden with richest 
argosies of thought. 


IV 

How to speak of Paradise Lost I know not. 
To call it a master-work is superfluous. To say 
that it stands absolutely alone and supreme is 
both true and false. Parts of it are like other 
poems, and yet there is no poem in the world 
like it. The theme is old; had been treated by 
192 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


the author of Genesis in brief, by Du Bartas 
and other rhymers at length. The manner is 
old, inherited from Virgil and Dante. And yet, 
beyond all question. Paradise Lost is one of the 
most unique, individual, unmistakable poems 
in the world’s literature. Imitations of it have 
been attempted by Montgomery, Pollok, Bick- 
ersteth, and other pious versifiers, but they are 
no more like the original than St. Peter’s in 
Montreal is like St. Peter’s in Rome, or than 
the pile of pinnacled limestone on New York’s 
Fifth Avenue is like the Cathedral of Milan, 
with its 

Chanting quires , 

The giant windows' blazoned fires , 

The height, the space , the gloomy the glory, 

A mount of marble, a hundred spires I 

Imitation may be the sincerest flattery, but 
imitation never produces the deepest resem- 
blance. The man who imitates is concerned 
with that which is outward, but kinship of spirit 
is inward. He who is next of kin to a master- 
mind will himself be too great for the work of 
a copyist; he will be influenced, if at all, un- 
consciously; and though the intellectual rela- 
tionship may be expressed also in some external 
traits of speech and manner, the true likeness 
will be in the temper of the soul and the same- 
193 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


ness of the moral purpose. Such likeness, I 
think, we can discern between Paradise Lost 
and Tennyson’s works, the Idylls of the King 
and In Memoriam. 

I shall speak first and more briefly of the 
Idylls, because I intend to make them the sub- 
ject of another study from a different point of 
view. At present we have to consider only 
their relations to the work of Milton. 

In this connection we ought not to forget 
that Milton was the first to call attention to 
the legend of King Arthur as a fit subject for 
a great English poem. Having made up his 
mind to write a national epic which should 
do for England that which Tasso and Ariosto 
had done for Italy, “that which the greatest 
and choicest wits of Athens and Rome, and 
those Hebrews of old did for their country,” 
Milton tells us that he entertained for a long 
time a design to 

Revoke into song the kings of our island , 

Arthur yet from his underground hiding stirring to war - 
fare , 

Or to tell of those that sat round him as Knights of his 
Table ; 

Great-souled heroes unmatched , and ( 0 might the spirit but 
aid me). 

Shiver the Saxon phalanxes under the shock of the Britons . 

194 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 

The design was abandoned: but it was a for- 
tunate fate that brought it at last into the hands 
of the one man, since Milton died, who was 
able to carry it to completion. 

Compare the verse of the Idylls with that of 
Paradise Lost . 

Both Milton and Tennyson were led by their 
study of the classic poets to understand that 
rhyme is the least important element in cer- 
tain forms of poetry; the noblest music is made 
by the concord rather than by the unison of 
sounds, and the coincidence of final consonants 
is but a slight matter compared with the cadence 
of syllables and the accented harmony of long 
vowels. Indeed it may be questioned whether 
the inevitable recurrence of the echo of rhyme 
does not sometimes disturb and break the music 
more than it enhances it. Certainly Milton 
thought so, and he frankly took great credit 
to himself for setting the example, “the first 
in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic 
poems from the troublesome and modern bond- 
age of riming.” 

There were many to follow him in this path, 
but for the most part with failure. They fell 
into the mistake of thinking that because un- 
rhymed verse was more free it was less difficult, 
and, making their liberty a cloak of poetic 
195 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


license, they poured forth floods of accurately 
measured prose under the delusion that they 
were writing blank-verse. 

The fact is that this is the one form of verse 
which requires the most delicate ear and the 
most patient labour. In Cowper, Coleridge, 
Southey, Wordsworth, Browning, these pre- 
conditions are often wanting. With the pos- 
sible exception of Matthew Arnold’s Sokrab 
and Rustum , the first English blank-verse since 
Milton worthy to compare with that of Para- 
dise Lost , is found in Tennyson’s Idylls of the 
King . 

There is a marked contrast in the movement 
of the two poems. Each has its own distinctive 
quality. In Milton we observe a more stately 
and majestic march, more of rhythm: in Tenny- 
son a sweeter and more perfect tone, more of 
melody. These qualities correspond, in verse, 
to form and colour in painting. We might say 
that Milton is the greater draughtsman, as 
Michael Angelo; Tennyson the better colourist, 
as Giorgione. But the difference between the 
two painters is greater than that between the 
two poets. For the methods by which the latter 
produce their effects are substantially the same; 
and their results differ chiefly as the work of 
a strong, but sometimes heavy, hand differs 
196 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


from that of a hand less powerful, but better 
disciplined. 

De Quincey has said, somewhere or other, 
that finding fault with Milton’s versification is 
a dangerous pastime. The lines which you 
select for criticism have a way of justifying 
themselves at your expense. That which you 
have condemned as a palpable blunder, an un- 
pardonable discord, comes out from the mouth 
of a better reader majestically right and har- 
monious. And so, continues De Quincey, when 
you attempt to take liberties with any passage 
of his, you feel as you might if you came upon 
what appeared to be a dead lion in a forest. 
You have an uncomfortable suspicion that he 
may not be dead, but only sleeping; or perhaps 
not even sleeping, but only shamming. Many 
an unwary critic has been thus unpleasantly 
surprised. Notably Drs. Johnson and Bentley, 
and in a small way Walter Savage Landor, 
roaring over Milton’s mistakes, have proved 
themselves distinctly in the wrong. 

But for all that, there are mistakes in Para- 
dise Lost . I say it with due fear, and not 
without a feeling of gratitude that the purpose 
of this essay does not require me to specify 
them. But a sense of literary candour forces 
me to confess the opinion that the great epic 
197 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


contains passages in which the heaviness of 
the thought has overweighted the verse, pas- 
sages which can be read only with tiresome 
effort, lines in which the organ-player’s foot 
seems to have slipped upon the pedals and made 
a ponderous discord. This cannot be said of 
the Idylls. Their music is not broken or jangled. 
It may never rise to the loftiest heights, but it 
never falls to the depths. Tennyson has written 
nothing as strong as the flight of Satan through 
Chaos, nothing as sublime as the invocation to 
Light, nothing as rich as the first description 
of Eden; but taking the blank- verse of the 
Idylls through and through, as a work of art, 
it is more finished, more perfectly musical than 
that of Paradise Lost. 

The true relationship of these poems lies, as 
I have said, beneath the surface. It consists 
in their ideal unity of theme and lesson. For 
what is it in fact with which Milton and Tenny- 
son concern themselves? Not the mere story 
of Adam and Eve’s transgression; not the 
legendary wars of Arthur and his knights; but 
the everlasting conflict of the human soul with 
the adversary, the struggle against sin, the 
power of the slightest taint of evil to infect, 
pollute, destroy all that is fairest and best. 
Both poets tell the story of a paradise lost, and 
lost through sin; first, the happy garden de- 
198 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


signed by God to be the home of stainless inno- 
cence and bliss, whose gates are closed forever 
against the guilty race; and then, the glorious 
realm of peace and love and law which the strong 
and noble king would make and defend amid 
the world’s warfares, but which is secretly cor- 
rupted, undermined, destroyed at last in black- 
ening gloom. 

To Arthur, as to Adam, destruction comes 
through that which seems, and indeed is, the 
loveliest and the dearest. The beauteous mother 
of mankind, fairer than all her daughters since, 
drawn by her own desire of knowledge into dis- 
obedience, yields the first entrance to the fatal 
sin ; and Guinevere, the imperial-moulded queen, 
led by degrees from a true friendship into a false 
love for Lancelot, infects the court and the 
whole realm with death. Vain are all safeguards 
and defenses; vain all high resolves and noble 
purposes; vain the instructions of the archangel 
charging the possessors of Eden to 

Be strong , live happy , and love ! but first of all 
Him whom to love is to obey! 

vain the strait vows and solemn oaths by which 
the founder of the Table bound his knights 

To reverence the King as if he were 

Their conscience , and their conscience as their King , 

To break the heathen and uphold the Christ . 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


All is vain, for sin comes creeping in; and sin, 
the slightest, the most seeming-venial, the most 
beautiful, is the seed of shame and death. This 
is the profound truth to which the Idylls of 
the King and Paradise Lost alike bear wit- 
ness. And to teach this, to teach it in forms of 
highest art which should live forever in the 
imagination of the race, was the moral purpose 
of Milton and Tennyson. 

But there is another aspect of this theme, 
which is hardly touched in the Idylls . Sin has 
a relation to God as well as to man, since it 
exists in His universe. Is it stronger than the 
Almighty ? Is His will wrath ? Is His purpose 
destruction ? Is darkness the goal of all things, 
and is there no other significance in death; no 
deliverance from its gloomy power? In Para- 
dise Lost Milton has dealt with this problem 
also. Side by side with the record “of man’s 
first disobedience” he has constructed the great 
argument whereby he would 

Assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

The poem has, therefore, parallel with its human 
side, a divine side, for which we shall look in 
vain among the Idylls of the King. Tenny- 
son has approached this problem from another 
200 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


standpoint in a different manner. And if we 
wish to know his solution of it, his answer to 
the mystery of death, we must look for it in 
In Memoriam. 

This poem is an elegy for Arthur Hallam, 
finished throughout its seven hundred and 
twenty-four stanzas with all that delicate care 
which the elegiac form requires, and permeated 
with the tone of personal grief, not passionate, 
but profound and pure. But it is such an elegy 
as the world has never seen before, and never 
will see again. It is the work of years, elaborated 
with such skill and adorned with such richness 
of poetic imagery as other men have thought 
too great to bestow upon an epic. It is the 
most exquisite structure ever reared above a 
human grave, more wondrous and more im- 
mortal than that world-famous tomb which 
widowed Artemisia built for the Carian Mauso- 
lus. But it is also something greater and better. 
Beyond the narrow range of personal loss and 
loneliness, it rises into the presence of the eternal 
realities, faces the great questions of our mys- 
terious existence, and reaches out to lay hold 
of that hope which is unseen but abiding, where- 
by alone we are saved. Its motto might well 
be given in the words of St. Paul: For our light 
affliction which is hut for a moment worketh for 
201 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory; while we look not at the things which are 
seen , but at the things which are not seen; for the 
things which are seen are temporal , but the things 
which are not seen are eternal . 

At first sight it may seem almost absurd to 
compare the elegy with the epic, and impos- 
sible to discover any resemblance between those 
long-rolling, thunderous periods of blank-verse 
and these short swallow-flights of song which 
“dip their wings in tears and skim away.” The 
comparison of In Memoriam with “Lycidas” 
would certainly appear more easy and obvious; 
so obvious, indeed, that it has been made a 
thousand times, and is fluently repeated by 
every critic who has had occasion to speak of 
English elegies. But this is just one of those 
cases in which an external similarity conceals 
a fundamental unlikeness. For, in the first 
place, Edward King, to whose memory Lyc - 
idas was dedicated, was far from being an 
intimate friend of Milton, and his lament has 
no touch of the deep heart-sorrow which throbs 
in In Memoriam . And, in the second place, 
“Lycidas” is in no sense a philosophical poem, 
does not descend into the depths or attempt to 
answer the vexed questions. But In Memo - 
riam is, in its very essence, profoundly and 
202 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 

thoroughly philosophical; and this brings it 
into relation with Paradise Lost. They are 
the two most famous poems — with the supreme 
exception of Dante’s Divine Comedy — -which 
deal directly with the mysteries of faith and 
reason, the doctrine of God and immortality. 

There is a point, however, in which we must 
acknowledge an essential and absolute differ- 
ence between the great epic and the great elegy, 
something deeper and more vital than any 
contrast of form and metre. Paradise Lost 
is a theological poem. In Memoriam is a 
religious poem. The distinction is narrow, but 
deep. Religion differs from theology as life 
differs from biology. 

Milton approaches the problem from the side 
of reason, resting, it is true, upon a supernat- 
ural revelation, but careful to reduce all its 
contents to a logical form, demanding a clearly- 
formulated and closely-linked explanation of all 
things, and seeking to establish his system of 
truth upon the basis of sound argument. His 
method is distinctly rational; Tennyson’s is 
emotional. He has no linked chain of deduc- 
tive reasoning; no sharp-cut definition of ob- 
jective truths. His faith is subjective, intuitive. 
Where proof fails him, he will still believe. 
When the processes of reason are shaken, dis- 
203 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


turbed, frustrated; when absolute demonstra- 
tion appears impossible, and doubt claims a 
gloomy empire in the mind, then the deathless 
fire that God has kindled in the breast burns 
towards that heaven which is its source and 
home, and the swift answer of immortal love 
leaps out to solve the mystery of the grave. 
Thus Tennyson feels after God, and leads us 
by the paths of faith and emotion to the same 
goal which Milton reaches by the road of reason 
and logic. 

Each of these methods is characteristic not 
only of the poet who uses it, but also of the 
age in which it is employed. Paradise Lost 
does not echo more distinctly the time of the 
Westminster divines than In Memoriam rep- 
resents the time of Maurice and Kingsley and 
Robertson. It is a mistake to think that the 
tendency of our day is towards rationalism. 
That was the drift of Milton’s time. Our modern 
movement is towards emotionalism, a religion 
of feeling, a subjective system in which the 
sentiments and affections shall be acknowledged 
as tests of truth. This movement has undoubt- 
edly an element of danger in it, as well as an 
element of promise. It may be carried to a 
false extreme. But this much is clear, — it has 
been the strongest inspiration of the men of 
204 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


our own time who have fought against atheism 
and the cold negations of scientific despair. 
The music of it is voiced forever in In Me - 
moriam. It is the heart now, not the colder 
reason, which rises to 

Assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

But the answer is none other than that which 
was given by the blind poet. The larger mean- 
ings of In Memoriam and Paradise Lost — what- 
ever we may say of their lesser meanings — find 
their harmony in the same 

Strong Son of God . 

Is Tennyson a Pantheist because he speaks of 

One God , one law , one element , 

And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves? 

Then so is Milton a Pantheist when he makes 
the Son say to the Father, — 

Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee 
Forever, and in me all whom thou lovest. 

Is Tennyson an Agnostic because he speaks 
of the “truths that never can be proved,” and 
finds a final answer to the mysteries of life only 
205 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


in a hope which is hidden “behind the veil”? 
Then so is Milton an Agnostic, because he de- 
clares 

Heaven is for thee too high 
To blow what passes there . Be lowly wise; 

Think only what concerns thee and thy being. 

Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid; 

Leave them to God above. 

Is Tennyson a Universalist because he says, 

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill 
To pangs of nature , sins of will y 
Defects of doubt , and taints of blood ? 

Then so is Milton a Universalist when he ex- 
claims, — 

0 , goodness infinite , goodness immense , 

That all this good of evil shall produce , 

And evil turn to good I 

The faith of the two poets is one; the mean- 
ing of In Memoriam and Paradise Lost is the 
same. The hope of the universe is in the Son 
of God, whom Milton and Tennyson both call 
“Immortal Love.” To Him through mists and 
shadows we must look up. 

Gladly behold , though but his utmost skirts 
Of glory , and far-off his steps adore. 

206 


MILTON AND TENNYSON 


Thus our cry out of the darkness shall be an- 
swered. Knowledge shall grow from more to 
more. 


Light after light well-used we shall attain , 

And to the end persisting safe arrive. 

But this can come only through self-surrender 
and obedience, only through the consecration 
of the free-will to God who gave it; and the 
highest prayer of the light-seeking, upward- 
striving human soul is this: — 

0, living ivill that shalt endure. 

When all that seems shall suffer shock , 

Rise in the spiritual Rock , 

Flow through our deeds and make them pure , 

That we may lift from out the dust 
A voice as unto him that hears, 

A cry above the conquered years. 

To one that with us works and trust. 

With faith that comes of self-control. 

The truths that never can be proved 
Until we close with all we love. 

And all we flow from, soul in soul . 


207 


V 

THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 

TT was somewhere in the forties of the last cen- 
tury that Edgar Allan Poe put forth a new 
doctrine of poetry, which, if I remember rightly, 
ran somewhat on this wise: ‘The greatest 
poems must be short. For the poetic inspira- 
tion is of the nature of a flash of lightning and 
endures only for a moment. But what a man 
writes between the flashes is worth compara- 
tively little. All long poems are therefore, of 
necessity, poor in proportion to their length, — 
or at best they are but a mass of pudding in 
which the luscious plums of poetry are em- 
bedded and partially concealed.’ 

This ingenious theory (which has a slight air 
of special pleading) has never been generally 
accepted. Indeed, at the very time when Poe 
was propounding it, and using the early poems 
of Tennyson as an illustration, the world at 
large was taking for granted the truth of the 
opposite theory, and demanding that the newly 
discovered poet should prove his claim to great- 
ness by writing something long. “We want to 
208 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 

see,” said one of the best of the critics in 1842, 
“a poem of power and sustained energy . Mr. 
Tennyson already enjoys a high position; let 
him aim at one still higher; why not the 
highest?” 

I believe that it was, at least partly, in 
answer to demands of this kind that The 
Princess appeared in 1847. Poe might have 
claimed it as an illustration of his theory. For 
it certainly adds more to the bulk of Tennyson’s 
poems than it contributes to the lasting fame 
of his poetry. Its length is greater than its 
merit. There are parts of it in which the style 
falls below the level of poetry of the first rank; 
and these are the very parts where the verse 
is most diffuse and the story moves most slowly 
through thickets of overgrown description. The 
“ flash of lightning” theory of poetic inspiration, 
although it is very far from being true or com- 
plete as a whole, appears to fit this poem with 
peculiar nicety; for the finest things in it are 
quite distinct, and so much better than the 
rest that they stand out as if illumined with 
sudden light. 

Perhaps there are still some admirers of 
Tennyson who will dispute this opinion. They 
may point out the admirable moral lesson of 
The Princess , which is all too evident, and 
209 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


dwell upon its influence in advancing the higher 
education of women, which is indisputable. 
They may insist upon its manifest superiority 
to other contemporary novels in verse, like 
Lucile or The Angel in the House . Grant all 
this. Still it does not touch the point of the 
criticism. For it is Tennyson himself who gives 
the standard of comparison. If Giulio Romano 
had painted the “Madonna di Foligno,” we 
might call it a great success — for him, but not 
for Raphael. Beside “La Sistina,” or even 
beside the little “Madonna del Granduca,” it 
suffers. “Enoch Arden,” “Dora,” “Locksley 
Hall,” are all shorter than The Princess but 
they are better. Their inspiration is more sus- 
tained. The style fits the substance more per- 
fectly. The poetic life in them is stronger and 
more enduring. One might say of them that 
they have more soul and less body. In brief, 
what I mean is this: The Princess is one of 
the minor poems of a major poet. 

But there is poetry enough scattered through 
it to make the reputation of a man of ordinary 
talent. What I want to do in this chapter is 
to value this element of genuine poetry at its 
true worth, and to distinguish it, if I can, from 
the lower elements which seem to me to mar 
the beauty and weaken the force of the poem. 

210 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


The Princess has for its theme the emanci- 
pation of woman, — a great question, certainly, 
but also a vexed question, and one which is 
better adapted to prose than to poetry, at least 
in the present stage of its discussion. It has so 
many sides, and such humourous aspects, and 
such various complications, that it is difficult 
to deal with it altogether in the realm of the 
ideal; and yet I suppose the man does not live, 
certainly the poet can hardly be found, who 
would venture to treat it altogether as a sub- 
ject for realistic comedy. That would be a 
daring, perhaps a fatal experiment, — especially 
now, since women have so largely obtained that 
political suffrage which some of them have 
long and justly demanded, and are beginning 
to enjoy, (more or less,) the privilege of going 
in person to the polls to cast their votes. 

This aspect of the subject was still remote in 
the middle of the Nineteenth Century when 
Tennyson wrote. He was dealing with the 
“ woman-question ” in its primary form, par- 
ticularly in its relation to education. But even 
so he appears to have felt its difficulties and 
perils, and to have had a touch of that malady 
which the French call froid aux yeux , and the 
Americans “cold feet.” 

He calls his story of the Princess Ida, who set 
211 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


out to be the deliverer of her sex by founding a 
Woman’s University, and ended by marrying 
the Prince who came to woo her in feminine 
disguise, “a Medley.” He represents the im- 
aginary poet, who appears in the Prologue, 
and who undertakes to dress up the story in 
verse for the ladies and gentlemen to whom it 
was told at a picnic, as being in a strait betwixt 
two parties in the audience: one party demand- 
ing a burlesque; the other party wishing for 
something “ true-heroic.” And so he says, — 

I moved as in a strange diagonal , 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

This diagonal movement may have been 
prudent; but it is unquestionably a little con- 
fusing. One hardly knows how to take the 
poet. At one moment he is very much in earnest ; 
the next moment he seems to be making fun 
of the woman’s college. The style is like a breeze 
which blows northwest by southeast; it may 
be a very lively breeze, and full of sweet odours 
from every quarter; but the trouble is that 
we cannot tell which way to trim our sails to 
catch the force of it, and so our craft goes jibing 
to and fro, without making progress in any 
direction. 

I think we feel this uncertainty most of all 
212 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 

in the characters of the Princess and the Prince, 
— and I name the Princess first because she is 
evidently the hero of the poem. Sometimes 
she appears very admirable and lovable, in a 
stately kind of beauty; but again she seems 
like a woman from whom a man with ordinary 
prudence and a proper regard for his own sense 
of humour would promptly and carefully flee 
away, appreciating the truth of the description 
which her father, King Gama, gives of her, — 

Awful odes she wrote y 
Too awful sure for what they treated of. 

But all she says and does is awful. 

There is a touch of her own style, it seems to 
me, here and there in the poem. The epithets 
are too numerous and too stately. The art is 
decidedly arabesque; there is a surplus of orna- 
ment; and here, more than anywhere else, 
one finds it difficult to defend Tennyson from 
the charge of over-elaboration. For example, 
he says of the eight “ daughters of the plough,” 
who worked at the woman’s college, that 

Each was like a Druid rock; 

Or like a spire of land that stands apart 

Cleft from the main , and waiVd about with mews. 

The image is grand, — just a little too grand 
for a group of female servants, summoned to 
213 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


eject the three masculine intruders from the 
university. 

The Princess was the first of Tennyson’s 
poems to become widely known in America, 
and it is a curious fact that the most favour- 
able, as well as the most extensive, criticisms 
of it have come from this side of the Atlantic. 
First, there was Professor James Hadley’s 
thoughtful review in 1849; then Mr. Edmund 
Clarence Stedman’s eloquent paragraphs in 
“Victorian Poets”; then Mr. S. E. Dawson’s 
admirable monograph published in Montreal; 
and finally Mr. William J. Rolfe’s scholarly 
“variorum” edition of The Princess , with notes. 
Mr. Dawson’s excellent little book was the 
occasion of drawing from Tennyson a letter, 
which seems to me one of the most valuable, 
as it is certainly one of the longest, pieces of 
prose that he has ever given to the public. It 
describes his manner of observing nature and 
his practice of making a rough npte in four or 
five words, like an artist’s sketch, of whatever 
struck him as picturesque, that is to say, fit 
to go into a picture. 

The Princess is full of the results of this 
kind of work, scattered here and there like 
flowers in a tangle of meadow-grass. For ex- 
ample, take these two descriptions of dawn: — 
214 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 

Notice of a change in the dark world 
Was lispt about the acacias y and a bird 
That early woke to feed her little ones 
Sent from her dewy breast a cry for light . — 

Morn in the white wake of the morning star 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold . — 

These are as different in feeling as possible, 
yet each is true, and each is fitted to the place 
in which it stands; for the one describes the 
beginning of a day among the splendours of 
the royal college before it was broken up; the 
other describes the twilight of the morning in 
which the Princess began to yield her heart to 
the tender touch of love. Or take again these 
two pictures of storm: — 

And standing like stately pine 
Set in a cataract on an island-crag , 

When storm is on the heights , and right and left 
Suck’d from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
The torrentSy dash’d to the vale . — 

As one that climbs a peak to gaze 
O’er land and main , and sees a great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deeps , a wall of night , 

Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore , 

And suck the blinding splendour from the sandy 
And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn , 
Expunge the world . — 

Tennyson says that the latter of these passages 
is a recollection of a coming tempest watched 
215 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


from the summit of Snowdon. Work like this, 
so clear, so powerful, so exact, would go far to 
redeem any poem, however tedious. 

But better still is the love-scene in the last 
canto, where the poet drops the tantalising 
vein of mock-heroics, and tells us his real thought 
of woman’s place and work in the world, in 
words which are as wise as they are beautiful. 
I have quoted them in another place and may 
not repeat them here. But there is one passage 
which I cannot forbear to give, because it seems 
to describe something of Tennyson’s own life. 

Alone , from earlier than 1 know. 

Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, 

I loved the woman: he that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self. 

Or pines in sad experience worse than death. 

Or keeps his wing'd affections dipt with crime: 

Yet was there one thro ' whom I loved her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways. 

Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants , 

No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 

Interpreter between the gods and men. 

Who look'd all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere 
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they mewed. 

And girded her with music . Happy he 
With such a mother 1 faith in womankind 
216 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


Beats with his blood , and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him , and tho 9 he trip and fall 
He shall not blind his soul with clay. 

This is worthy to be put beside Words- 
worth’s — 

“A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food." 

But the very best things in the poem are, 
“Tears, idle tears,” the “small, sweet Idyl,” 
and the songs which divide the cantos. Tenny- 
son said that these songs were not an after- 
thought; that he had designed them from the 
first, but doubted whether they were necessary, 
and did not overcome his laziness to insert them 
until the third edition in 1850. It may be that 
he came as near as this to leaving out the jewels 
which are to the poem what the stained-glass 
windows are to the confused vastness of York 
Minster, — the light and glory of the structure. 
It would have been a fatal loss. For he has 
never done anything more pure and perfect 
than these songs, clear and simple and musical 
as the chime of silver bells, deep in their power 
of suggestion as music itself. Not a word in 
them can be omitted or altered, neither can 
they be translated. The words are the songs. 
“Sweet and low,” “Ask me no more,” and 
217 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


“Blow, bugle, blow” will be remembered and 
sung, as long as English hearts move to the 
sweet melody of love and utter its secret mean- 
ings in the English tongue. 

Maud may well be considered in the same 
chapter with The Princess , because they have 
some important things in common. They are 
both very modern; both deal with the pas- 
sion of romantic love; in both, the story is an 
element of interest. But these points of re- 
semblance bring out more clearly the points 
of contrast. The one is a light epic; the other 
is a lyrical drama. The one is complicated; 
the other is simple. The style of the one is 
narrative, diffuse, decorated; the style of the 
other is personal, direct, condensed. In the 
one you see rather vague characters, whose 
development depends largely upon the un- 
folding of the plot; in the other you see the 
unfolding of the plot controlled by the develop- 
ment of a single, strongly-marked character. 
In fact, Tennyson himself has given us the 
only true starting-point for the criticism of 
each of these poems in a single word, by calling 
ing The Princess “a Medley,” and Maud “a 
Monodrama.” 

I will confess frankly, although frank con- 
218 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


fession is not precisely fashionable among critics, 
that for a long time I misunderstood Maud 
and underrated it. This came from looking at 
it from the wrong point of view. I was en- 
lightened by hearing the poet read the poem 
aloud at the close of his last summer of life, 
August, 1892. 

Tennyson’s reading was extraordinary. His 
voice was deep, strong, masculine, limited in 
its range, with a tendency to monotone, broad- 
ening and prolonging the vowels and rolling 
the r’s. It was not flexible, nor melodious in 
the common sense of the word, but it was mu- 
sical in a higher sense, as the voice of the sea is 
musical. When he read he ignored all the formal 
rules of elocution, raised his voice a little above 
his usual tone in speaking, and poured out the 
poem in a sustained rhythmic chant. He was 
carried away and lost in it. In the passionate 
passages his voice rose and swelled like the 
sound of the wind in the pine-trees; in the lines 
which express grief and loneliness it broke and 
fell like the throbbing and murmuring of the 
waves on the beach. I felt the profound human 
sympathy of the man, the largeness and force 
of his nature. I understood the secret of the 
perfection of his lyrical poems. Each one of 
them had been composed to a distinct music 
219 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


of its own. He had heard it in his mind before 
he had put it into words. I saw also why his 
character-pieces were so strong. He had been 
absorbed in each one of them. The living per- 
sonality had been real to him, and he had en- 
tered into its life. 

All this came home to me as I sat in the eve- 
ning twilight in the study at Aldworth, and 
listened to the poet, with his massive head out- 
lined against the pale glow of the candles, his 
dark, dreamy eyes fixed closely upon the book, 
lifted now and then to mark the emphasis of 
a word or the close of a forceful line, and his 
old voice ringing with all the passion of youth, 
as he chanted the varying cantos of the lyrical 
drama of Maud. It was easy to see why he 
loved it, and what it meant to him. There 
was no vanity, but a touch of that childlike 
candour which belongs to the great, in what 
he said to me at the close of the reading: “I 
don’t claim that ‘Maud’ is one of my greatest 
poems, but I think it is one of my most original 
poems.” 

It is permissible, after so long a lapse of time, 
to condense the substance of the remarks and 
comments which he made during and after the 
reading, and to put them in single quotation- 
marks, to show that while his exact words may 
220 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


not be used, the purport of what he said is faith- 
fully rendered. 

‘You must remember always, in reading it, 
what it is meant to be — a drama in lyrics. It 
shows the unfolding of a lonely, morbid soul, 
touched with inherited madness, under the in- 
fluence of a pure and passionate love. Each 
lyric is meant to express a new moment in this 
process. The things which seem like faults be- 
long not so much to the poem as to the char- 
acter of the hero. 

‘He is wrong, of course, in much that he says. 
If he had been always wise and just he would 
not have been himself. He begins with a false 
comparison — “blood-red heath.” There is no 
such thing in nature; but he sees the heather 
tinged like blood because his mind has been 
disordered and his sight discoloured by the 
tragedy of his youth. He is wrong in thinking 
that war will transform the cheating tradesman 
into a great-souled hero, or that it will sweep 
away the dishonesties and lessen the miseries 
of humanity. The history of the Crimean War 
proves his error. But this very delusion is nat- 
ural to him: it is in keeping with his morbid, 
melancholy, impulsive character to seek a cure 
for the evils of peace in the horrors of war. 

‘He is wild and excessive, of course, in his 
221 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


railings and complainings. He takes offense at 
fancied slights, reviles those whom he dislikes, 
magnifies trifles, is subject to hallucinations, 
hears his name called in the corners of his lonely 
house, fancies that all the world is against him. 
He is not always noble even in the expression 
of his love at first. He sometimes strikes a 
false note and strains the tone of passion until 
it is almost hysterical. There is at least one 
passage in which he sings absurdly of trifles, 
and becomes, as he himself feared that he would, 
“fantastically merry.” But all this is just what 
such a man would do in such a case. The 
psychological study is complete, from the first 
outburst of moody rage in the opening canto, 
through the unconscious struggle against love 
and the exuberant joy which follows its en- 
trance into his heart and the blank despair 
which settles upon him when it is lost, down to 
the picture of real madness with which the 
second part closes. It is as true as truth 
itself.’ 

The spell of that day when the poet inter- 
preted his own work to me is still potent in my 
memory, and renews itself as often as I read 
the poem. But there still remain certain ques- 
tions to ask in regard to it. What is there in 
the story to make it worth the telling? What 
222 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


elements of beauty has the poet conferred upon 
it? What has he given to this strange and 
wayward hero to redeem him ? Three gifts. 

First, the gift of exquisite, delicate, sensitive 
perception. He sees and hears the wonderful, 
beautiful things which only a poet can see and 
hear. He knows that the underside of the Eng- 
lish daisy is pink, and when Maud passes home- 
ward through the fields he can trace her path 
by the upturned flowers, — 

For her feet have touch’d the meadows 
And left the daisies rosy. 

He sees how the tops of the trees on a windy 
morning are first bowed by the wind and then 
tossed from side to side, — 

Caught and cuff’d by the gale. 

He has noted the colour of the red buds on the 
lime-tree in the spring, and how the green leaves 
burst through them, — 

A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime. 

He has heard the “ broad-flung shipwrecking 
roar of the tide” and the sharp “scream” of 
the pebbles on the beach dragged down by the 
receding wave. He has listened to the birds 
that seem to be calling, “Maud, Maud, Maud, 
223 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Maud,” — and he knows perfectly well that they 
are not nightingales, but rooks, flying to their 
nests in the tall trees around the Hall. The 
poem is rich in observations of nature. 

The second gift which is bestowed upon the 
hero of Maud is the power of song. And in 
bestowing this the poet has proved the fine- 
ness and subtlety of his knowledge. For it 
is precisely this gift of song which sometimes 
descends upon a wayward, eccentric life, — as it 
did upon Shelley’s, — and draws from it tones 
of ravishing sweetness; not harmonies, for har- 
mony belongs to the broader mind, but melo- 
dies, which catch the heart and linger in the 
memory forever. Strains of this music come 
to us from Maud: the song of triumphant 
love, — 

1 have led her home , my love, my only friend. 

There is none like her, none , — 

the nocturne that rises like the breath of pas- 
sion from among the flowers, — 

Come into the garden, Maud , — 
and the lament, — 

0 that 9 1 were possible . 

These lyrics are magical, unforgettable; they 
give an immortal beauty to the poem. 

224 


THE PRINCESS AND MAUD 


The third gift, and the greatest, which be- 
longs to the hero of Maud , is the capacity for 
intense, absorbing, ennobling love. It is this 
that makes Maud love him, and saves him from 
himself, and brings him out at last from the 
wreck of his life, a man who has awaked to the 
nobler mind and knows — 

It is better to fight for the good than rail at the ill. 

How clearly this awakening is traced through 
the poem ! His love is tinged with selfishness 
at first. He thinks of the smile of Maud as 
the charm which is to make the world sweet 
to him; he says: 

Then let come what come may 
To a life that has been so sad , 

I shall have had my day. 

But unconsciously it purifies itself. He looks 
up at the stars and says: — 

But now shine on , and what care /, 

Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl 
The countercharm of space and hollow sky , 

And do accept my madness , and would die 
To save from some slight shame one simple girl. 

And at last, when his own fault has destroyed 
his happiness and divided him from her for- 
ever, his love does not perish, but triumphs 
over the selfishness of grief. 

225 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Comfort her, comfort her, all things good , 

While I am over the seal 

Let me and my 'passionate love go hy, 

But speak to her all things holy and high . 

Whatever happen to me! 

Me and my harmful love go by; 

But ccme to her waking, find her asleep , 

Powers of the height, Powers of the deep, 

And comfort her tho 9 I die. 

This is the meaning of Maud . Love is the 
power that redeems from self. 


226 


VI 

IN MEMORIAM 


jyTANY beautiful poems, and some so noble 
that they are forever illustrious, have 
blossomed in the valley of the shadow of death. 
But among them all none is more rich in signif- 
icance, more perfect in beauty of form and 
spirit, or more luminous with the triumph of 
light and love over darkness and mortality, 
than In Memoriam , the greatest of English 
elegies. 

How splendid is the poetic company in which 
it stands ! Milton’s stately and solemn lament 
for ‘ 1 ‘ Lycidas ” ; Gray’s pure and faultless “ Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard”; Shelley’s musical 
and mournful “Adonai’s”; Matthew Arnold’s 
pensive “Thyrsis,” and his deeper “ Lines at 
Sunset in Rugby Chapel”; Emerson’s profound, 
passionate, lovely “Threnody” on the death 
of his little son, — these all belong to the high 
order of poetry which lives, and these all came 
forth from the heart of man at the touch of 
death. 

In Memoriam differs from the others in 
two things: first, in the fulness and intimacy 
227 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


with which it discloses the personal relations 
and the personal loss and sorrow out of which 
it grew; and, second, in the breadth and thor- 
oughness with which it enters into the great 
questions of philosophy and religion that rise 
out of the experience of bereavement. It has, 
therefore, a twofold character; it is a glorious 
monument to the memory of a friend, and it 
is the great English classic on the love of im- 
mortality and the immortality of love. 

It was published in 1850, and the title-page 
bore no name, either of the author or of the 
person to whom it was dedicated. But every 
one knew that it was written by Alfred Tenny- 
son in memory of his friend Arthur Henry Hal- 
lam. Their friendship was formed at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, where they had entered as 
students in October, 1828, Tennyson being then 
in his twentieth year. Hallam, who was a year 
and a half younger, was the son of Henry Hal- 
lam, the historian, and had already distinguished 
himself among his contemporaries by the beauty 
and force of his character and the brilliancy of 
his attainments, especially in the study of mod- 
ern poetry and art, in philosophy, and in ar- 
gumentative discussion. He did not incline 
strongly to the study of the classics, and towards 
mathematics, the favourite discipline of Cam- 
228 


IN MEMORIAM 


bridge, he was almost entirely indifferent. These 
mental indispositions, together with a lack of 
power or willingness to retain in his memory 
the mass of uninteresting facts and dates which 
are required for success in examinations, and 
a delicacy of health which at times made him 
subject to serious depression of spirits, unfitted 
him to contend for university honours. But 
he was a natural leader among the high-spirited 
youth who found in the reality of university 
life and the freedom of intellectual intercourse 
a deeper and broader education than the routine 
of the class-room could give. There was a de- 
bating society in Cambridge at this time, fa- 
miliarly called “The Twelve Apostles,” which 
included such men of promise as Richard Monck- 
ton Milnes (afterward Lord Houghton), W. H. 
Thompson (afterward Master of Trinity), Rich- 
ard Chevenix Trench (afterward Archbishop of 
Dublin), Henry Alford (afterward Dean of 
Canterbury), Frederick Denison Maurice, W. 
H. Brookfield, James Speeding, Edmund Lush- 
ington, and G. S. Venables. In this society 
Hallam shone with a singular lustre, not only 
by reason of the depth and clearness of his 
thought and the vigour of his expression, but 
also because of the sweetness and purity of 
his character and the sincerity of his religious 
229 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

spirit, strengthened and ennobled by conflict 
with honest doubt. One of his friends wrote 
of him: “I have met with no man his superior 
in metaphysical subtlety; no man his equal 
as a philosophical critic on works of taste; no 
man whose views on all subjects connected 
with the duties and dignities of humanity were 
more large, more generous and enlightened.” 
Gladstone, recalling his intimacy with Hallam 
at Eton, bears witness to “his unparalleled en- 
dowments and his deep, enthusiastic affections, 
both religious and human.” 

It was by such qualities that Alfred Tenny- 
son was drawn to Arthur Hallam; and although, 
or perhaps because, they were unlike in many 
things, their minds and hearts were wedded in 
a friendship which was closer than brother- 
hood, and in which Hallam’s influence was 
the stronger and more masculine element, so 
that Tennyson spoke of himself as “widowed” 
by his loss. 

The comradeship of the two men was of the 
most intimate nature. They were together in 
study and in recreation, at home and abroad. 
In 1829 they were friendly rivals for the medal 
in English verse, which Tennyson won with his 
poem “Timbuctoo.” In 1830 they made an 
excursion together to the Pyrenees, carrying 
230 


IN MEMORIAM 


money and letters of encouragement to the 
Spanish revolutionists. This visit is alluded 
to in the poem called “In the Valley of Cau- 
teretz.” About this time they were planning 
to bring out a volume of poems in company, 
after the example of Wordsworth and Coleridge; 
but by the wise advice of Hallam’s father this 
project was abandoned, and Tennyson’s slender 
volume of Poems , Chiefly Lyrical appeared alone. 
Hallam’s review of this book in The English- 
man's Magazine for August, 1831, was one of 
the very earliest recognitions that a new light 
had risen in English poetry. He said: — 

“Mr. Tennyson belongs decidedly to the 
class we have already described as Poets of 
Sensation. He sees all the forms of nature with 
the eruditus oculus , and his ear has a fairy fine- 
ness. There is a strange earnestness in his wor- 
ship of beauty, which throws a charm over his 
impassioned song, more easily felt than de- 
scribed, and not to be escaped by those who 
have once felt it. . . . We have remarked five 
distinctive excellencies of his own manner. 
First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the 
same time his control over it. Secondly, his 
power of embodying himself in ideal characters, 
or rather moods of character, with such extreme 
accuracy of adjustment that the circumstances 
231 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


of the narrative seem to have a natural corre- 
spondence with the predominant feeling, and, 
as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative 
force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delinea- 
tion of objects, and the peculiar skill with which 
he holds all of them fused, to borrow a metaphor 
from science, in a medium of strong emotion. 
Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, 
and exquisite modulation of harmonious sounds 
and cadences to the swell and fall of the feel- 
ings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of 
thought implied in these compositions, and im- 
parting a mellow soberness of tone, more im- 
pressive to our minds than if the author had 
drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought 
to instruct the understanding rather than to 
communicate the love of beauty to the heart.” 

This may still stand, among later and more 
searching criticisms, as an intelligent and sug- 
gestive appreciation of the sources of Tenny- 
son’s poetical charm and power. 

Many allusions to incidents in Hallam’s brief 
life may be discovered in In Memoriam. He 
was a frequent visitor in the home of the Ten- 
nysons at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, coming in 
winter and summer holidays. In 1832, the 
year of his graduation at Cambridge, he was 
engaged to Miss Emily Tennyson, the poet’s 
232 


IN MEMORIAM 


sister. His home was with his father in Wim- 
pole Street, called the longest street in Lon- 
don. On leaving college he began the study 
of law, looking forward to the higher life of 
public service, in which so many of England’s 
best young men find their mission. In August, 
1833, he went with his father to Germany. On 
the way from Pesth to Vienna he was exposed 
to inclement weather and contracted an inter- 
mittent fever. The symptoms were slight and 
seemed to be abating, but the natural frailty 
of his constitution involved unforeseen danger. 
There was a weakness of the heart which the 
strength of the spirit had concealed. On the 
15th of September, while he seemed to be re- 
posing quietly, the silver cord was loosed and 
the golden bowl was broken. 

In Vienna’s fatal walls 
God’s finger touch’d him , and he slept . 

The sharp and overwhelming shock of losing 
such a friend suddenly, irretrievably, in ab- 
sence, with no opportunity of speaking a word 
of love and farewell, brought Tennyson face to 
face with the inexorable reality of death — the 
great mystery which must either darken all 
life and quench the springs of poesy, or open a 
new world of victory to the spirit, and refresh 
233 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


it with deeper and never-failing fountains of 
inspiration. 

In Memoriam begins with the confession of 
this dreadful sense of loss, and the firm resolve 
to hold fast the memory of his grief, even though 
he doubts whether he can 

reach a hand through time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears. 

The arrangement of the poem does not follow 
strictly the order of logic or the order of time. 
It was not written consecutively, but at inter- 
vals, and the period of its composition extends 
over at least sixteen years. The Epithalamium 
with which it closes was made in 1842, the date 
of the marriage of Miss Cecilia Tennyson to 
Edmund Law Lushington, the friend addressed 
in the eighty-fifth canto. The Proem, “ Strong 
Son of God, immortal Love,” was added in 
1849, to sum up and express the final significance 
of the whole lyrical epic of the inner life which 
had grown so wonderfully through these long 
years of spiritual experience. “The general 
way of its being written,” said Tennyson, “was 
so queer that if there were a blank space I would 
put in a poem.” And yet there is a profound 
coherence in the series of separate lyrics; and a 
clear advance towards a definite goal of thought 


IN MEMORIAM 


and feeling can be traced through the freedom 
of structure which characterises the poem. 

I follow here in prose the grouping of the 
sections which was given by Tennyson himself. 
If any one wishes to feel the essential difference 
between poetry and prose he has only to com- 
pare this outline with the successive cantos of 
In Memoriam. 

The first division of the poem, from the first 
to the eighth canto, moves with the natural 
uncertainty of a lonely and sorrowful heart; 
questioning whether it is possible or wise to 
hold fast to sorrow; questioning whether it be 
not half a sin to try to put such a grief into 
words; questioning whether the writing of a 
memorial poem can be anything more than a 

sad , mechanic exercise y 
Like dull narcotics , numbing pain. 

But the conclusion is that, since the lost friend 
loved the poet’s verse, this poem shall be written 
for his sake and consecrated to his memory. 

The second division, beginning with the ninth 
canto and closing with the nineteenth, describes 
in lyrics of wondrous beauty the home-bringing 
of Arthur’s body in a ship from Italy, and the 
burial at Clevedon Church, which stands on a 
solitary hill overlooking the Bristol Channel. 

235 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


This took place on January 3, 1834. A calmer, 
stronger, steadier spirit now enters into the 
poem, and from this point it moves forward 
with ever deepening power and beauty, to pay 
its tribute to the immortal meaning of friend- 
ship, and to pour its light through the shadows 
of the grave. 

The third division, beginning with the twen- 
tieth canto, returns again to the subject of 
personal bereavement and the possibility of 
expressing it in poetry. It speaks of the neces- 
sity in the poet’s heart for finding such an ex- 
pression, which is as natural as song is to the 
bird. He turns back to trace the pathway of 
friendship, and remembers how love made it 
fair and sweet, doubling all joy and dividing 
all pain. That companionship is now broken 
and the way is dreary. The love to which he 
longs to prove himself still loyal is now the 
minister of lonely sorrow. And yet the very 
capacity for such suffering is better than the 
selfish placidity of the loveless life: 

* Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

The fourth division opens, in the twenty- 
eighth canto, with a Christmas poem. The poet 
wonders how it is possible to keep the joyous 
236 


IN MEMORIAM 


household festival under the shadow of this 
great loss. But through the saddened and half- 
hearted merry-making there steals at last, in 
the silence, the sense that those who have left 
the happy circle still live and are unchanged in 
sympathy and love. From the darkness of 
Christmas eve rises the prayer for the dawning 
of Christmas day and 

The light that shone when Hope was bom. 

Led by this thought, the poet turns to the 
story of Lazarus, and to Mary’s faith in Him 
who was the Resurrection and the Life. Such 
a faith is so pure and sacred that it demands 
the reverence even of those who do not share 
it. For what would our existence be worth 
without immortality ? Effort and patience 
would be vain. It would be better to drop 
at once into darkness. Love itself would be 
changed and degraded if we knew that death 
was the end of everything. These immortal 
instincts of our manhood came to their perfect 
expression in the life and teachings of Christ. 
And though the poet’s utterance of these divine 
things be but earthly and imperfect, at least 
it is a true tribute to the friend who spoke of 
them so often. Thus he stands again beside 
the funereal yew-tree, of which he wrote, in the 
237 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


second canto, that it never blossomed, and 
sees that, after all, it has a season of bloom, 
in which the dust of tiny flowers rises from it. 
Even so his thoughts of death are now blos- 
soming in thoughts of a higher life into which 
his friend has entered — thoughts of larger pow- 
ers and nobler duties in the heavenly existence. 
But may not this mysterious and sudden ad- 
vancement divide their friendship? No; for 
if the lost friend is moving onward so swiftly 
now, he will be all the better fitted to be a teacher 
and helper when their intercourse is renewed; 
but if death should prove to be “an inter vital 
trance,” then when he awakens the old love 
will awaken with him. From this assurance 
the poet passes to wondering thoughts of the 
manner of life of “the happy dead,” and rises 
to the conviction that it must include an un- 
changed personal identity and a certain personal 
recognition and fellowship. This is not uttered 
by way of argument, but only with the brevity 
and simplicity of songs which move like swallows 
over the depths of grief, — 

Whose muffled motions blindly drown 
The bases of my life in tears . 

The fifth division of the poem, in the fiftieth 
canto, begins with a prayer that his unseen 
238 


IN MEMORIAM 


friend may be near him in the hours of gloom 
and pain and doubt and death. Such a pres- 
ence would bring with it a serene sympathy and 
allowance for mortal ignorance and weakness 
and imperfection. For doubtless this lower 
life of ours is a process of discipline and edu- 
cation for something better. Good must be 
the final goal of ill. We feel this but dimly 
and blindly; our expression of it is like the 
cry of a child in the night; but at least the de- 
sire that it may be true comes from that which 
is most Godlike in our souls. Can it be that 
God and Nature are at strife? Is it possible 
that all the hopes and prayers and aspirations 
of humanity are vain dreams, and that the 
last and highest work of creation must crumble 
utterly into dust? This would be the very 
mockery of reason. And yet the sure answer 
is not found; it lies behind the veil. So the 
poet turns away, thinking to close his song 
with a last word of farewell to the dead; but 
the Muse calls him to abide a little longer with 
his sorrow, in order that he may “take a nobler 
leave.” 

This is the theme with which the sixth divi- 
sion opens, in the fifty-ninth canto. The poet 
is to live with sorrow as a wife, and to learn 
from her all that she has to teach. He turns 
239 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


again to the thought of the strange difference 
in wisdom and purity between the blessed dead 
and the living, and finds new comfort and 
strength in the thought that this difference 
cannot destroy love. He thinks of the tablet 
to Hallam’s memory in Clevedon Church, 
silvered by the moonlight or glimmering in 
the dawn. He dreams of Hallam over and 
over again. Night after night they seem to 
walk and talk together, as they did on their 
tour in' the Pyrenees. 

The seventy-second canto opens the seventh 
division of the poem with the anniversary of 
Hallam’s death — an autumnal dirge, wild and 
dark, followed by sad lyrics which ring the 
changes on the perishableness of all earthly 
fame and beauty. But now the Christmas-tide 
returns and brings the tender household joys. 
This is a brighter Christmas than the last, '.the 
thought of how faithfully and nobly Arthur 
would have borne the sorrow, if he had been 
the one to be left while his friend was taken, 
calms and strengthens the poet’s heart. He 
reconciles himself more deeply with death; 
learns to believe that it has ripened friendship 
even more than earthly intercourse could have 
done; assures himself that the transplanted life 
240 


IN MEMORIAM 


is still blooming and bearing richer fruit; and 
at last complains only because death has 

put our lives so far apart 
We cannot hear each other speak. 

Now the spring comes, renewing the face of 
the earth; and with it comes a new tenderness 
and sweetness into the poet’s song. There is 
a pathetic vision of all the domestic joys that 
might have been centred about Arthur’s life 
if it had been spared, and of the calm harmony 
of death if the two friends could have arrived 
together at the blessed goal. 

And He that died in Holy Land 
Would reach us out the shining handy 
And take us as a single soul. 

This vision almost disturbs the new peace 
that has begun in the poet’s heart; but he comes 
back again, in the eighty-fifth canto (the longest 
in the poem, and its turning-point), to the deep 
and unalterable feeling that love with loss is 
better than life without love. Another friend, 
the same who was to be married later to Tenny- 
son’s sister, has asked him whether his sorrow 
has darkened his faith and made him incapable 
of friendship. The answer comes from the in- 
most depths of the soul; recalling all the noble 
241 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


and spiritual influences of the interrupted com- 
radeship; confessing that it still abides and 
works as a potent, strengthening force in his 
life; and seeking for the coming years a new 
friendship, not to rival the old, nor ever to sup- 
plant it, but to teach his heart still 

to beat in time with one 
That warms another living breast. 

Now the glory of the summer earth kindles 
the poetic fancy once more to rapture; now 
the old college haunts are revisited and the 
joys of youth 1 live again in memory. The 
thought of Arthur’s spiritual presence lends a 
new and loftier significance to these common 
delights, brings more sweetness than sadness, 
makes his letters, read in the calm summer 
midnight, seem like a living voice. The re- 
membrance of his brave conflict with his doubts 
gives encouragement to faith. Now he is de- 
livered from the struggle; he has attained unto 
knowledge and wisdom: but the poet, still 
lingering among the shadows and often con- 
fused by them, holds fast to the spiritual com- 
panionship : 

1 cannot understand: I love. 

The eighth division, from the ninety-ninth to 
the one hundred and third canto, opens with 
242 


IN MEMORIAM 

another anniversary of Ilallam’s death, which 
brings the consoling thought that, since grief 
is common, sympathy must be world-wide. 
The old home at Somersby is now to be for- 
saken, and the poet takes farewell of the fa- 
miliar scenes. The division ends with a mystical 
dream, in which he is summoned to a voyage 
upon the sea of eternity, and the human powers 
and talents, in the guise of maidens who have 
served him in this life, accompany him still, 
and the man he loved appears on the ship as 
his comrade. 

The ninth and last division begins, in the 
one hundred and fourth canto, with the return 
of another Christmas eve. The Tennyson 
family had removed in 1837 to Beech Hill 
House, and now, as the time draws near the 
birth of Christ, they hear, not the fourfold peal 
of bells from the four hamlets lying around 
the rectory at Somersby, but a single peal from 
the tower of Waltham Abbey, dimly seen 
through the mist below the distant hill. It 
is a strange, solemn, silent holiday season; but 
with the ringing of the bells on the last night 
of the old year there comes into it a new, stirring 
melody of faith, of hope, of high desire and vic- 
torious trust. This is a stronger, loftier song 
than the poet could have reached before grief 
243 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


ennobled him; and from this he rises into that 
splendid series of lyrics with which the poem 
closes. The harmony of knowledge with rever- 
ence; the power of the heart of man to assert 
its rights against the colder conclusions of mere 
intellectual logic; the certainty that man was 
born to enjoy a higher life than the physical, 
and that though his body may have been de- 
veloped from the lower animals, his soul may 
work itself out from the dominion of the pas- 
sions to an imperishable liberty; the supremacy 
of love; the sure progress of all things towards 
a hidden goal of glory; the indomitable courage 
of the human will, which is able to purify our 
deeds, and to trust. 

With faith that comes of self-control. 

The truths that never can be 'proved 
Until we close with all we loved. 

And all we flow from, soul in soul , — 

these are the mighty and exultant chords with 
which the poet ends his music. 

In Memoriam is a dead-march, but it is a 
march into immortality. 

The promise of Arthur Hallam’s life was not 
broken. Threescore years and ten of earthly 
labour could hardly have accomplished any- 
thing greater than the work which was inspired 
by his early death and consecrated to his be- 
244 


IN MEMORIAM 


loved memory. The heart of man, which can 
win such victory out of its darkest defeat and 
reap such harvest from the furrows of the grave, 
is neither sprung from dust nor destined to 
return to it. A poem like In Memoriam , more 
than all flowers of the returning spring, more 
than all shining wings that flutter above the 
ruins of the chrysalis, more than all sculptured 
tombs and monuments of the beloved dead, is 
the living evidence and intimation of an endless 
life. 


245 


VII 

IDYLLS OF THE KING 


i 

npHE history of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King 
*■“ is one of the most curious and unlikely 
things in all the annals of literature. Famous 
novels have so often been written piecemeal 
and produced in parts, that readers of fiction 
have made a necessity of virtue, and learned 
to add to their faith, patience. But that a great 
poet should be engaged on his largest theme for 
more than half a century; that he should touch 
it first with a lyric; then with an epical frag- 
ment and two more lyrics; then with a poem 
which was suppressed as soon as it was written; 
then with four romantic idyls, followed, ten 
years later, by four others, and two years later 
by two others, and thirteen years later by yet 
another idyl, which is to be placed, not before 
or after the rest, but in the very centre of the 
cycle; that he should begin with the end, and 
continue with the beginning, and end with the 
middle of the story, and produce at last a poem 
246 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


which certainly has more epical quality than 
anything that has been made in English since 
Milton died, is a thing so marvellous that no 
man would credit it save at the sword’s point 
of fact. Yet this is the exact record of Tenny- 
son’s dealing with the Arthurian legend. 

“The Lady of Shalott,” that dreamlike fore- 
shadowing of the story of Elaine, was published 
in 1832; “Sir Galahad” and “Sir Launcelot 
and Queen Guinevere” in 1842. Underneath 
their smooth music and dainty form they hide 
the deeper conceptions of character and life 
which the poet afterwards worked out more 
clearly and fully. They compare with the 
Idylls as a cameo with a statue. But the 
germ of the whole story of the fall of the Round 
Table lies in this description of Guinevere: — 

She looked so lovely , as she swayed 

The rein with dainty finger-tips, 

A man had given all other bliss , 

And all his worldly worth for this. 

To waste his whole heart in one kiss 
Upon her perfect lips . 

“Morte d’Arthur” was printed in the same 
volume and marks the beginning of a new 
manner of treatment, not lyrical, but epical. 
It is worth while to notice the peculiar way in 
which it is introduced. A brief prelude, in Ten- 
247 


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nyson’s conversational style, says that the poem 
was a fragment of an “Epic of King Arthur,” 
which had contained twelve cantos, but which 
the poet, being discontented with their anti- 
quated style, and regarding them as 

Faint Homeric echoes , nothing worthy 

had determined to burn. This one book had 
been picked from the hearth by a friend, and 
was the sole relic of the conflagration. 

I do not imagine that we are to interpret this 
preface so literally as to conclude that Tenny- 
son had actually written and destroyed eleven 
other books upon this subject; for though he 
has exercised a larger wisdom of suppression 
in regard to his immature work than almost 
any other poet, such a wholesale destruction 
of his offspring would have an almost Saturnine 
touch about it. But we may certainly infer 
that he had contemplated the idea of an Ar- 
thurian epic, and had abandoned it after severe 
labour as impracticable, and that he had in- 
tended not to conclude the poem with the death 
of Arthur, but to follow it with a sequel; for 
we must observe the fact, which has hitherto 
escaped the notice of the critics, that this rescued 
fragment was not the twelfth but the eleventh 
canto in the original design. We cannot help 
248 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


wondering what the conclusion would have been 
if this first plan had been carried out. Per- 
haps some vision of the island valley of Avilion; 
perhaps some description of the return of the 
King in modern guise as the founder of a new 
order of chivalry; but whatever it might have 
been we can hardly regret its loss, for it is 
evident now that the “Morte d’Arthur” forms 
the true and inevitable close of the story. 

How long the poet held to his decision of 
abandoning the subject, we cannot tell. The 
first sign that he had begun to work at it again 
was in 1857, when he printed privately a poem 
called “Enid and Nimue; or. The True and 
the False.” This does not seem to have satis- 
fied his fastidious taste, for it was never pub- 
lished, though a few copies are said to be extant 
in private hands. 

In June, 1858, Clough “heard Tennyson 
read a third Arthur poem, — the detection of 
Guinevere and the last interview with Arthur.” 
In 1859 appeared the first volume, entitled 
Idylls of the King , with a motto from the old 
chronicle of Joseph of Exeter , — “ Flos regum 
Arthurus .” The book contained four idyls: 
“Enid,” “Vivien,” “Elaine,” and “Guinevere.” 
“Enid” has since been divided into “The Mar- 
riage of Geraint,” and “Geraint and Enid.” 

249 


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This first volume, therefore, contained the 
third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eleventh idyls. 

In 1862 there was a new edition, dedicated 
to the Prince Consort. In 1870 four more 
idyls were published: “The Coming of Arthur,” 
“The Holy Grail,” “Pelleas and Ettarre,” and 
“The Passing of Arthur,” — respectively the 
first, the eighth, the ninth, and the twelfth, in 
the order as it stands now. In 1872 “Gareth 
and Lynette” and “The Last Tournament” 
were produced, — the second and the tenth parts 
of the cycle. In 1885 the volume entitled 
Tiresias and Other Poems contained an idyl 
with the name of “Balin and Balan,” which 
was designated in a note as “an introduction 
to ‘ Merlin and Vivien/” and thus takes the 
fifth place in the series. 

I have been careful in tracing the order of 
these poems because it seems to me that the 
manner of their production throws light upon 
several important points. Leaving out of view 
the Arthurian lyrics, as examples of a style of 
treatment which was manifestly too light for 
the subject; setting aside also the first draught 
of the “Morte d’Arthur,” as a fragment whose 
full meaning and value the poet himself did 
not recognise until later; we observe that the 
significance of the story of Arthur and the 
250 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 

legends that clustered about it was clearly seen 
by Tennyson somewhere about the year 1857, 
and that he then began to work upon it with 
a large and positive purpose. For at least thirty 
years he was steadily labouring to give it form 
and substance; but the results of his work were 
presented to the world in a sequence of which 
he alone held the clue: the third and fourth, 
the sixth, seventh, and eleventh, the first, the 
eighth, the ninth, the twelfth, the second, the 
tenth, the fifth, — such was the extraordinary 
order of parts in which this work was published. 

This fact will account, first of all, for the 
failure of the public to estimate the poems in 
their right relation and at their true worth. 
Their beauty of imagery and versification was 
at once acknowledged; but so long as they 
were regarded as separate pictures, so long as 
their succession and the connection between 
them were concealed, it was impossible to form 
any complete judgment of their meaning or 
value. As Wagner said of his “Siegfried”: 
“It cannot make its right and unquestionable 
impression as a single whole, until it is allot- 
ted its necessary place in the complete whole. 
Nothing must be left to be supplemented by 
thought or reflection: every reader of unprej- 
udiced human feeling must be able to com- 
251 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


prehend the whole through his artistic percep- 
tions, because then only will he be able rightly 
to understand the single incidents.” * 

In the second place, this fact makes clear to 
us the reason and justification of the general 
title which Tennyson has given to these poems. 
He has been criticised very frequently for calling 
them Idylls. And if we hold the word to its 
narrower meaning, — “a short, highly wrought 
poem of a descriptive and pastoral character,” 
— it certainly seems inappropriate. But if we 
go back to the derivation of the word, and re- 
member that it comes from €28o? 5 which means 
not merely the form, the figure, the appearance 
of anything, but more particularly that form 
which is characteristic and distinctive, the ideal 
element, corresponding to the Latin species , 
we can see that Tennyson was justified in adapt- 
ing and using it for his purpose. He intended 
to make pictures, highly wrought, carefully 
finished, full of elaborate and significant de- 
tails. But each one of these pictures was to 
be animated with an idea, clear, definite, un- 
mistakable. It was to make a form express a 
soul. It was to present a type, not separately, 
but in relation to other types. This was the 
method which he had chosen. His design was 

* Wagner’s letter to Liszt, November 20, 1851. 

252 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


not purely classical, nor purely romantic, but 
something between the two, like the Italian 
Gothic in architecture. He did not propose 
to tell a single straightforward story for the 
sake of the story; nor to bring together in one 
book a mass of disconnected tales and legends, 
each of which might just as well have stood 
alone. He proposed to group about a central 
figure a number of other figures, each one of 
which should be as finished, as complete, as 
expressive, as he could make it, and yet none 
of which could be clearly understood except 
as it stood in its own place in the circle. For 
this kind of work he needed to find or invent 
a name. It may be that the word “Idylls” 
does not perfectly express the meaning. But 
at least there is no other word in the language 
which comes so near to it. 

In the third place, now that we see the 
Idylls all together, standing in their proper 
order and relation, now that we perceive that 
with all their diversity they do indeed belong to 
the King, and revolve about him as stars about 
a central sun, we are able to appreciate the 
force of the poet’s creative idea which could 
sustain and guide him through such long and 
intricate labour and produce at last, from an 
apparent chaos of material, an harmonious 
253 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


work of art of a new order. For this was the 
defect, hitherto, of the romantic writers, de- 
scending by ordinary generation from Sir Walter 
Scott, — that their work had lacked unity; it 
was confused, fragmentary, inorganic. And this 
was the defect, hitherto, of the classical writers, 
descending by ordinary generation from Alex- 
ander Pope, — that their work had lacked life, 
interest, colour, detail. But Tennyson has 
succeeded at least to some extent, in doing 
what Victor Hugo described in his criticism of 
Quentin Durward : — 

“Apres le roman pittoresque mais prosaique 
de Walter Scott, il restera un autre roman a 
creer, plus beau et plus complet encore selon 
nous. C’est le roman a la fois drame et epopee, 
pittoresque mais poetique, reel mais ideal, vrai 
mais grand, qui enchassera Walter Scott dans 
Homere.” 

ii 

The material which Tennyson has used for 
his poem is the strange, complex, mystical story 
of King Arthur and his Round Table. To trace 
the origin of this story would lead us far afield 
and entangle us in the thickets of controversy 
which are full of thorns. Whether Arthur was 
a real king who ruled in Britain after the de- 
254 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


parture of the Romans, and founded a new 
order of chivalry, and defeated the heathen in 
various more or less bloody battles, as Nennius 
and other professed historians have related; 
or whether he was merely “a solar myth,” as 
the Vicomte de la Villemarque has suggested; 
whether that extremely patriotic Welshman, 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, commonly called -“the 
veracious Geoffrey,” who wrote in 1138 a full 
account of Arthur’s glorious achievements, really 
deserved his name; or whether his chronicle was 
merely, as an irreverent Dutch writer has said, 
“a great, heavy, long, thick, palpable, and 
most impudent lie;” whether the source of 
the story was among the misty mountains of 
Wales or among the castles of Brittany, — all 
these are questions which lead aside from the 
purpose of this essay. This much is certain: 
in the twelfth century the name of King Arthur 
had come to stand for an ideal of royal wisdom, 
chivalric virtue, and knightly prowess which 
was recognised alike in England and France 
and Germany. 

His story was told again and again by Trou- 
vere and Minnesinger and prose romancer. In 
camp and court and cloister, on the banks of 
the Loire, the Rhine, the Thames, men and 
women listened with delight to the description 
255 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


of his character and glorious exploits. A vast 
undergrowth of legends sprang up about him. 
The older story of Merlin the Enchanter; the 
tragic tale of Sir Lancelot and his fatal love; 
the adventures of Sir Tristram and Sir Gawain; 
the mystical romance of the Saint Graal, with 
its twin heroes of purity, Percivale and Galahad, 
— these and many other tales of wonder and 
of woe, of amourous devotion and fierce con- 
flict and celestial vision, were woven into the 
Arthurian tapestry. It extended itself in every 
direction, like a vast forest; the paths crossing 
and recrossing each other; the same characters 
appearing and disappearing in ever-changing 
disguises; beauteous ladies and valiant knights 
and wicked magicians and pious monks coming 
and going as if there were no end of them; so 
that it is almost impossible for the modern 
reader to trace his way through the confusion, 
and he feels like the Frenchman who complained 
that he “ could not see the wood for the trees.” 

It was at the close of the age of chivalry, in 
the middle of the fifteenth century, when the 
inventions of gunpowder and printing had be- 
gun to create a new order of things in Eu- 
rope, that an English knight, Sir Thomas Mal- 
ory by name, conceived the idea of rewriting 
the Arthurian story in his own language, and 
256 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


gathering as many of these tangled legends as 
he could find into one complete and connected 
narrative. He must have been a man of genius, 
for his book was more than a mere compilation 
from the French. He not only succeeded in 
bringing some kind of order out of the con- 
fusion; he infused a new and vigourous life into 
the ancient tales, and clothed them in fine, 
simple, sonorous prose, so that his “Morte 
d’Arthur” is entitled to rank among the best 
things in English prose romance. 

William Caxton, the printer, was one of the 
first to recognise the merits of the book, and 
issued it from his press at Westminster, in 1485, 
with a delightful preface — in which he tells 
what he thought of the story. After a naive 
and intrepid defence of the historical reality of 
Arthur, which he evidently thinks it would be 
as sacrilegious to doubt as to question the exist- 
ence of Joshua, or King David, or Judas Mac- 
cabeus, he goes on to say: “ Herein may be 
seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friend- 
liness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, 
murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the 
good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you 
to good fame and renommee. And for to pass 
the time this book shall be pleasant to read 
in, but for to give faith and belief that all is 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


true that is contained herein, ye be at your 
liberty: but all is written for our doctrine, and 
for to beware that we fall not to vice nor sin, 
but to exercise and follow virtue, by the which 
we may come and attain to good fame and re- 
nown in this life, and after this short and tran- 
sitory life to come into everlasting bliss in 
heaven; the which He grant us that reigneth 
in heaven, the blessed Trinity. Amen.” 

This pleasant and profitable book was for 
several generations the favourite reading of the 
gentlemen of England. After falling into com- 
parative obscurity for a while, it was brought 
back into notice and favour in the early part 
of the nineteenth century. In 1816 two new 
editions of it were published, the first since 
1634; and in the following year another edition 
was brought out, with an introduction and 
notes by Southey. It was doubtless through 
the pages of Malory that Tennyson made ac- 
quaintance with the story of Arthur, and from 
these he has drawn most of his materials for 
the Idylls . 

One other source must be mentioned: in 
1838 Lady Charlotte Guest published The 
Mabinogian , a translation of the ancient Welsh 
legends contained in the “red book of Hergest,” 
which is in the library of Jesus College at Ox- 
258 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 

ford. From this book Tennyson has taken the 
story of Geraint and Enid. 

Turning to look at the manner in which the 
poet has used his materials, we observe two 
things: first, that he has taken such liberties 
with the outline of the story as were necessary 
to adapt it to his own purpose; and second, 
that he has thrown back into it the thoughts 
and feelings of his own age. 

In speaking of the changes which he has 
made in the story I do not allude to the omis- 
sion of minor characters and details, nor to 
the alterations in the order of the narrative, 
but to changes of much deeper significance. 
Take for example the legend of Merlin: Mal- 
ory tells us that the great Mage “fell in a do- 
tage on a damsel that hight Nimue and would 
let her have no rest, but always he would be 
with her. And so he followed her over land 
and sea. But she was passing weary of him 
and would fain have been delivered of him, for 
she was afraid of him because he was a devil’s 
son. And so on a time it happed that Merlin 
shewed to her in a rock, whereas was a great 
wonder, and wrought by enchantment, that 
went under a great stone. So by her subtle 
working she made Merlin to go under that 
stone, to let her into of the marvels there, but 
259 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


she wrought so there for him that he came never 
out for all the craft that he could do. And so 
she departed and left Merlin.” 

How bald is this narrative compared with 
the version which Tennyson has given ! He 
has created the character of Vivien, the woman 
without a conscience, a feminine Iago, in modern 
phrase “a Vampire.” He has made her, not 
the pursued, but the pursuer, — the huntress, 
but of another train than Dian’s. He has 
painted those weird scenes in the forest of Broce- 
liande, where the earthly wisdom of the magician 
proves powerless to resist the wiles of a subtler 
magic than his own. He has made Merlin yield 
at last to an appeal for protection which might 
have deceived a nobler nature than his. He 
tells the ancient charm in a moment of weak- 
ness; and while he sleeps, Vivien binds him 
fast with his own enchantment. He lies there, 
in the hollow oak, as dead, 

And lost to life and use and name and fame , 

while she leaps down the forest crying “Fool !” 
and exulting in her triumph. It is not a pleasant 
story. In some respects it is even repulsive: it 
was meant to be so. But it has a power in it 
that was utterly unknown to the old legend; 
it is the familiar tale of Sophocles’ Ajax, or of 
260 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 

Samson and Delilah, told with unrivalled skill 
and beauty of language. 

There is another change, of yet greater im- 
portance, which affects not a single idyl, but 
the entire cycle. Malory has made the down- 
fall of the Round Table and the death of Arthur 
follow, at least in part, a great wrong which 
the King himself had committed. Modred, 
the traitor, is represented as the son of Belli- 
cent, whom Arthur had loved and betrayed in 
his youth, not knowing that she was his own 
half-sister. Thus the story becomes a tragedy 
of Nemesis. The King is pursued and destroyed, 
like (Edipus in the Greek drama, by the con- 
sequences of his own sin. Tennyson has en- 
tirely eliminated this element. He makes the 
King say of Modred, 

I must strike against the man they call 
My sister's son — no kin of mine. 

He traces the ruin of the realm to other causes, 
— the transgression of Lancelot and Guinevere, 
the corruption of the court through the in- 
fluence of Vivien, and the perversion of Ar- 
thur’s ideals among his own followers. 

Swinburne — the most eloquent of dogmatists 
— asserts that this change is a fatal error, that 
the old story was infinitely nobler and more 
261 


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poetic, and that Tennyson has ruined it in the 
telling. Lavish in his praise of other portions of 
the Laureate’s work, he has been equally lav- 
ish in his blame of the Idylls . He calls them 
the “Morte d’ Albert, or Idylls of the Prince 
Consort”; he pours out the vials of his contempt 
upon the character of “the blameless king,” and 
declares that it presents the very poorest and 
most pitiful standard of duty or of heroism. 
All this wrath, so far as I can understand it, 
is caused chiefly by the fact that Tennyson 
has chosen to free Arthur from the taint of 
incest, and represent him, not as the victim 
of an inevitable tragic destiny, but rather as 
a clean, brave soul, who fights in one sense 
vainly, but in another and a higher sense suc- 
cessfully, against the forces of evil in the world 
around him. 

But when we come to consider Swinburne’s 
criticism more closely, we can see that it is 
radically unjust because it is based upon ig- 
norance. He does not seem to know that the 
element of Arthur’s spiritual glory belongs to 
the ancient story just as much as the darker 
element of blind sin, clinging shame, and re- 
morseless fate. At one time, in the Arthurian 
legend, the King is described as the very flower 
of humanity, the most perfect man that God 
262 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


had made since Adam; at another time he is 
exhibited as a slayer of innocents planning to 
destroy all the “ children born of lords and ladies, 
on May-day,” because Merlin had predicted that 
one of them would be his own rival and de- 
stroyer. Malory has woven together these in- 
congruous threads after the strangest fashion. 
But no one who has read his book can doubt 
which of the two threads is the more important. 
It is the excellence of Arthur, his superiority 
to his own knights, his noble purity and strength, 
that really control the story; and the other, 
darker thread sinks gradually out of sight, be- 
comes more and more obscure, until finally it 
is lost, and Arthur’s name is inscribed upon his 
tomb as Rex quondam , rexque futurus. 

Now it was open to Tennyson to choose which 
of the threads he would follow; but it was im- 
possible to follow both. He would have had 
no hero for his poem, he would have been un- 
able to present any consistent picture of the 
King unless he had exercised a liberty of selec- 
tion among these incoherent and at bottom 
contradictory elements which Malory had 
vainly tried to blend. 

If he had intended to make a tragedy after 
the old Greek fashion, in which Nemesis should 
be the only real hero, that would have been 
263 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


another thing: then he must have retained the 
unconscious sin of Arthur, his weakness, his 
impotence to escape from its consequences, as 
the central and dominant motive of the story. 
But his design was diametrically the opposite 
of this. He was writing in the modern spirit, 
which lays the emphasis not on Fate, but on 
Free-will. He meant to show that the soul of 
man is not bound in inextricable toils and fore- 
doomed to hopeless struggle, but free to choose 
between good and evil, and that the issues of 
life, at least for the individual, depend upon 
the nature of that choice. It was for this reason 
that he made Arthur, as the ideal of the highest 
manhood, pure from the stains of ineradicable 
corruption, and showed him rising, moving 
onward, and at last passing out of sight, like a 
star which accomplishes its course in light and 
beauty. 

Swinburne had a right to find fault with Ar- 
thur’s character as an ideal; he had a right to 
say that there are serious defects in it, that it 
lacks virility, that it has a touch of insincerity 
about it, that it comes perilously near to self- 
complacency and moral priggishness. There 
may be truth in some of these criticisms. But 
to condemn the Idylls because they are not 
built upon the lines of a Greek Tragedy is as 
264 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


superfluous and unjust as it would be to blame 
a pine-tree for not resembling an oak, or to 
despise a Gothic cathedral because it differs 
from a Doric temple. 

It was legitimate, then, for Tennyson to 
select, out of the mass of materials which Mal- 
ory had collected, such portions as were adapted 
to form the outline of a consistent story, and to 
omit the rest as unnecessary and incapable of 
being brought into harmony with the design. 
But was it also legitimate for the poet to treat 
his subject in a manner and spirit so distinctly 
modern, — to make his characters discuss the 
problems and express the sentiments which 
belong to the nineteenth century ? 

It cannot be denied that he has done this. 
Not only are many of the questions of morality 
and philosophy which arise in the course of 
the Idylls , questions which were unknown to 
the Middle Ages, but the tone of some of the 
most suggestive and important speeches of 
Merlin, of Arthur, of Lancelot, of Tristram, 
is manifestly the tone of these latter days. Take 
for example Merlin’s oracular triplets in “The 
Coming of Arthur”: — 

Rain, rain and sun / a rainbow on the lea! 

And truth is this to me, and that to thee ; 

And truth or clothed or naked let it be . 

265 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


We recognise here the accents of the modern 
philosopher who holds that all knowledge is 
relative and deals only with phenomena, the 
reality being unknowable. Or listen to Tristram 
as he argues with Isolt: — 

The vows? 

O ay — the wholesome madness of an hour. 

. . . The wide world laughs at it. 

And worldling of the world am I, and know 
The 'ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour 
Woos his own end; we are not angels here y 
Nor shall be : vows — I am woodman of the woods 
And hear the garnet-headed yaffingale 
Mock them: my soul , we love but while we may; 

And therefore is my love so large for thee , 

Seeing it is not bounded save by love. 

That is the modern doctrine of free love, not 
only in its conclusion, but in its argument drawn 
from the example of the birds, — the untimely 
ptarmigan that invites destruction, and the 
red-crested woodpecker that pursues its amours 
in the liberty of nature. 

Or hear the speech which Arthur makes to 
his knights when they return from the quest 
of the Holy Grail: — 

And some among you held, that if the King 
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: 

Not easily , seeing that the King must guard 
That which he rules , and is but as the hind , 

266 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


To whom a space of land is given to plough y 
Who may not wander from the allotted field 
Before his work be done. 

That is the modern conception of kingship, the 
idea of responsibility as superior to authority. 
Public office is a public trust. The discharge 
of duty to one’s fellow-men, the work of resist- 
ing violence and maintaining order and right- 
ing the wrongs of the oppressed, is higher and 
holier than the following of visions. The service 
of man is the best worship of God. But it was 
not thus that kings thought, it was not thus 
that warriors talked in the sixth century. 

Has the poet any right to transfer the ideas 
and feelings of his own age to men and women 
who did not and could not entertain them? 
The answer to this question depends entirely 
upon the view which we take of the nature 
and purpose of poetry. If it is to give an exact 
historical account of certain events, then of 
course every modern touch in an ancient story, 
every reflection of the present into the past, 
is a blemish. But if the object of poetry is to 
bring out the meaning of human life, to quicken 
the dead bones of narrative with a vital spirit, 
to show us character and action in such a way 
that our hearts shall be moved and purified 
by pity and fear, indignation and love; then 
267 


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certainly it is not only lawful but inevitable 
that the poet should throw into his work the 
thoughts and emotions of his own age. For 
these are the only ones that he can draw from 
the life. 

There is a certain kind of realism which ab- 
solutely destroys reality in a work of art. It 
is the shabby realism of the painter who took 
it for granted that the only way to paint a sea- 
beach with accuracy was to sprinkle his canvas 
with actual sand; the shabby realism of the 
writers who are satisfied with reproducing the 
dialect, the dress, the manners of the time and 
country in which the scene of their story is 
laid, without caring whether their dramatis 
personce have any human nature and life in 
them or not. Great pictures or great poems 
have never been produced in this way. They 
have always contained anachronisms. 

Every poet of the first rank has idealised — or 
let us rather say, vitalised — his characters by 
giving to them the thoughts and feelings which 
he has himself experienced, or known by living 
contact with men and women of his own day. 
Homer did this with Ulysses, Virgil with ^Eneas, 
Shakespeare with Hamlet, Goethe with Faust. 
From the very beginning, the Arthurian legends 
have been treated in the same way. Poets and 
268 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


prose romancers have made them the mirror 
of their own chivalric ideals and aspirations. 
Compared with the Rolands and the Aliscans 
of the chansons de geste , Lancelot and Gawain 
and Percivale are modern gentlemen. And 
why ? Not because the supposed age of Arthur 
was really better than the age of Charlemagne, 
but simply because Chretien de Troyes and 
Wolfram von Eschenbach had higher and finer 
conceptions of knighthood and piety and cour- 
tesy and love, which they embodied in their 
heroes of the Round Table. 

No one imagines that the “Morte d’Arthur” 
in any of its forms is an exact reproduction of 
life and character in Britain in the time of the 
Saxon invasion. It is a reflection of the later 
chivalry — the chivalry of the Norman and 
Angevin kings. If the story could be used to 
convey the ideals of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, why not also the ideals of the nine- 
teenth century ? If it be said that Arthur was 
not really a modern gentleman, it may be an- 
swered that it is just as certain that he was 
not a mediaeval gentleman; possibly he was 
not a gentleman at all. There was no more 
necessity that Tennyson should be true to Mal- 
ory, than there was that Malory should be 
true to Walter Map or Robert de Borron. Each 
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of them was a poet, a maker, a creator for his 
own age. The only condition upon which it 
was possible for Tennyson to make a poem 
about Arthur and his knights was that he should 
cast his own thoughts into the mould of the 
ancient legends, and make them represent living 
ideas and types of character. This he has done 
so successfully that the Idylls stand among the 
representative poems of the Victorian age. 


hi 

Two things are to be considered in a work of 
art: the style and the substance. 

So far as the outward form of the Idylls is 
concerned, they take a very high place in Eng- 
lish verse. In music of rhythm, in beauty of 
diction, in richness of illustration, they are 
unsurpassed. They combine in a rare way 
two qualities which seem irreconcilable, — deli- 
cacy and grandeur, the power of observing the 
most minute details and painting them with 
absolute truth of touch, and the power of cloth- 
ing large thoughts in simple, vigourous, sweep- 
ing words. 

It would be an easy matter to give examples 
of the first of these qualities from every page 
of the Idylls . They are full of little pictures 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


which show that Tennyson has studied Nature 
at first hand, and that he understands how to 
catch and reproduce the most fleeting and deli- 
cate expressions of her face. Take, for instance, 
some of his studies of trees. He has seen the 
ancient yew-tree tossed by the gusts of April, — 
That puff'd the swaying branches into smoke , — 

little clouds of pollen rising from the blossoms, 
as if it were on fire. He has noted the resem- 
blance between a crippled, shivering beggar 
and 

An old dwarf-elm 

That turns its back on the salt blast; 

and the line describes exactly the stunted, suffer- 
ing, patient aspect of a tree that grows beside 
the sea and is bent landward by the prevailing 
winds. He has felt the hush that broods upon 
the forest when a tempest is coming, — 

And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm 
In silence. 

Not less exact is his knowledge of the birds 
that haunt the forests and the fields. He has 
seen the 

Careful robins eye the delver’s toil; 

and listened to 

The great plover's human whistle . 

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He knows, also, how the waters flow and 
fall; how a wild brook 

Slopes o’er a little stone , 

Running too vehemently to break upon it; 

how, in a sharper rapid, there is a place 

Where the crisping white 
Plays ever back upon the sloping wave. 

Most remarkable of all is his knowledge of 
the sea, and his power to describe it. He has 
looked at it from every standpoint and caught 
every phase of its changing aspect. Take these 
four pictures. First, you stand upon the cliffs 
of Cornwall and watch the huge Atlantic bil- 
lows, blue as sapphire and bright with sunlight, 
and you understand how Isolt could say, 

0 sweeter than all memories of thee , 

Deeper than any yearnings after thee , 

Seem’d those far-rolling, westward-smiling seas. 

Then, you lie upon the smooth level of some 
broad beach, on a summer afternoon. 

And watch the curled white of the coming wave 
Glass’d in the slippery sand before it breaks. 

Then, you go into a dark cavern like that of 
Staffa, and see the dumb billows rolling in, 
one after another, groping their way into the 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


farthest recesses as if they were seeking to find 
something that they had lost, and you know 
how it was with Merlin when 

So dark a forethought roll'd about his brain , 

As on a dull day in an ocean cave 

The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall 

In silence. 

But if it should be asserted that lines like 
these prove the fineness of Tennyson’s art rather 
than the greatness of his poetry, the assertion 
might be granted, and still we should be able 
to support the larger claim by pointing to pas- 
sages in the Idylls which are unquestionably 
magnificent, — great not only in expression but 
great also in thought. There are single lines 
which have the felicity and force of epigrams: 
Obedience is the courtesy due to kings. 

He makes no friend who never made a foe. 

Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love. 

A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas. 

Mockery is the fume of little hearts. 

There are longer passages in which the highest 
truths are uttered without effort, and in lan- 
guage so natural and inevitable that we have 
to look twice before we realise its grandeur. 
Take for example the description of human 
error in “ Geraint and Enid”: 

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0 'purblind race of miserable men. 

How many among us even at this hour 
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves 
By taking true for false, or false for true; 

Here , thro ’ the feeble twilight of this world , 
Groping , how many , until we pass and reach 
That other , where we see as we are seen ! 

Or take Arthur’s speech to Lancelot in “The 
Holy Grail”:— 

Never yet 

Could all of true and noble in knight and man 
Twine round one sin , whatever it might be , 

With such a closeness , but apart there grew 


Some root of knighthood and pure nobleness: 
Whereto see thou , that it may bear its flower . 

Or, best of all, take that splendid description 
of Lancelot’s disloyal loyalty to Guinevere, in 
“Elaine”:— 

The shackles of an old love straitened him: 

His honour rooted in dishonour stood , 

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. 

It is an admirable example of what has been 
called “the grand style,” — terse yet spacious, 
vigourous yet musical, clear yet suggestive; not 
a word too little or too much, and withal a sense 
of something larger in the thought, which words 
cannot fully reveal. 


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DYLLS OF THE KING 


It would be superfluous to quote at length 
such a familiar passage as the parting of Arthur 
and Guinevere at Almesbury. But let any 
reader take this up and study it carefully; mark 
the fluency and strength of the verse; the ab- 
sence of all sensationalism, and yet the thrill 
in the far-off sound of the solitary trumpet 
that blows while Guinevere lies in the dark at 
Arthur’s feet; the purity and dignity of the 
imagery, the steady onward and upward move- 
ment of the thought, the absolute simplicity 
of the language as it is taken word by word, 
and yet the richness and splendour of the effect 
which it produces, — and if he is candid, I think 
he must admit that there have been few Eng- 
lish poets masters of a style more grand than 
this. 

But of course the style alone does not make 
a masterpiece, nor will any number of eloquent 
fragments redeem a poem from failure if it lacks 
the soul of greatness. The subject of it must 
belong to poetry; that is to say, it must be 
adapted to move the feelings as well as to arouse 
the intellect, it must have the element of mys- 
tery as well as the element of clearness. Whether 
the form be lyric or epic, dramatic or idyllic, 
the poet must make us feel that he has some- 
thing to say that is not only worth saying, but 
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also fitted to give us pleasure through the quick- 
ening of the emotions. The central idea of the 
poem must be vital and creative; it must have 
power to sustain itself in our minds while we 
read; it must be worked out coherently, and 
yet it must suggest that it belongs to a larger 
truth whose depths are unexplored and inac- 
cessible. It seems to me that these are the 
conditions of a great poem. We have now to 
consider whether or not they are fulfilled in the 
Idylls of the King . 

The meaning of the Idylls has been dis- 
tinctly stated by the poet himself, and we are 
bound to take his words as the clue to their 
interpretation. In the “ Dedication to the 
Queen” he says: — 

Accept this old imperfect tale 
New-old , and shadowing Sense at war with Soul , 

Rather than that gray king , whose name , a ghost 
Streams like a cloud , man-shaped , from mountain-peaky 
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still: or him 
Of Geoffrey's book , or him of Malleor's , cme 
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time 
That hover'd between war and wantonness , 

And crownings and dethronements. 

This is a clear disavowal of an historical pur- 
pose in the Idylls . But does it amount to 
the confession that they are an allegory pure 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


and simple? It is in this sense that the critics 
have commonly taken the statement. But I 
venture to think that they are mistaken, and 
that the mistake has been a barrier to the 
thorough comprehension of the poem and a 
fertile source of errors in some of the essays 
which have been written about it. 

Precisely what is an allegory ? It is not merely 
a representation of one thing by another which 
resembles it in its properties or circumstances, 
a picture where the outward form conveys a 
hidden meaning, a story 

“Where more is meant than meets the ear .” 

It is a work in which the figures and characters 
are confessedly unreal, a masquerade in which 
the actors are not men and women, but virtues 
and vices dressed up in human costume. The 
distinguishing mark of allegory is personifica- 
tion. It does not deal with actual persons, but 
with abstract qualities which are treated as if 
they were persons, and made to speak and act 
as if they were alive. It moves, therefore, alto- 
gether in a dream-world: it is not only improb- 
able but impossible: at a touch its figures 
dissolve into thin air. 

For example, Dtirer’s picture of “ Death and 
the Knight” has allegorical features in it, but 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


it is not an allegory, because the Knight is an 
actual man of flesh and blood, — or perhaps one 
ought to say (remembering that grim figure), 
of bone and nerve. “Melancolia,” on the con- 
trary, is an allegory of the purest type. Goethe’s 
Faust is not an allegory, although it is full 
of symbolism and contains a hidden meaning. 
Spenser’s Faerie Queene is an allegory, because 
its characters are only attributes in disguise, 
and its plot is altogether arbitrary and artifi- 
cial. 

The defect of strict allegory is that it always 
disappoints us. A valiant knight comes riding 
in, and we prepare to follow his adventures 
with wonder and delight. Then the poet in- 
forms us that it is not a knight at all, but only 
Courage, or Temperance, or Patience, in armour; 
and straightway we lose our interest; we know 
exactly what he is going to do, and we care 
not what becomes of him. A fair damsel ap- 
pears upon the scene, and we are ready to be 
moved to pity by her distress, and to love by 
her surpassing beauty, until presently we are 
reminded that it is not a damsel at all, but only 
Purity, or Faith, or Moral Disinterestedness, 
running about in woman’s clothes; and forth- 
with we are disenchanted. There is no specu- 
lation in her eyes. Her hand is like a stuffed 
278 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


glove. She has no more power to stir our feel- 
ings than a proposition in Euclid. We would 
not shed a drop of blood to win her ghostly 
favour, or to rescue her from all the giants that 
ever lived. 

But if the method were reversed; if instead 
of a virtue representing a person, the poet gave 
us a person embodying and representing a vir- 
tue; if instead of the oppositions and attrac- 
tions of abstract qualities, we had the trials 
and conflicts and loves of real men and women 
in whom these qualities were living and work- 
ing, — then the poet might remind us as often 
as he pleased of the deeper significance of his 
story; we should still be able to follow it with 
interest. 

This is the point which I desire to make in 
regard to the Idylls of the King . It is a dis- 
tinction which, so far as I know, has never been 
clearly drawn. The poem is not an allegory, 
but a parable. 

Of course there are a great many purely alle- 
gorical figures and passages in it. The Lady 
of the Lake, for example, is a personification 
of Religion. She dwells in a deep calm, far 
below the surface of the waters, and when they 
are tossed and troubled by storms. 

Hath power to walk the water like our Lord . 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


She gives to the King his sword Excalibur, to 
represent either the spiritual weapon with which 
the soul wars against its enemies, or, as seems 
to me more probable, the temporal power of 
the church. For it bears the double inscrip- 
tion: — 


On one side 

Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world , 

“ Take me” hut turn the blade and ye shall see. 
And written in the speech ye speak yourselves , 

“ Cast me away” And sad was Arthur’s face 
Taking it , hut old Merlin counselled him 
“ Take thou and strike ! the time to cast away 
Is yet far-off” So this great brand the King 
Took , and by this will beat his foemen down. 


The necessity of actual flesh-and-blood warfare 
against the heathen is proclaimed in the ancient 
language; the uselessness of such weapons under 
the new order, in the modern conflict, is pre- 
dicted in the language of to-day. 

The Lady of the Lake is described as stand- 
ing on the keystone of the gate of Camelot: — 

All her dress 

Wept from her sides , as water flowing away : 

But , like the cross , her great and goodly arms 
Stretch’d under all the cornice, and upheld: 

And drops of water fell from either hand : 

And down from one a sword was hung, from one 
A censer , either worn with wind and storm; 

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IDYLLS OF THE KING 

And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish; 

and over all , 

High on the top , were those three Queens , the friends 
Of Arthur , who should help him at his need. 

This is an allegory of the power of religion in 
sustaining the fabric of society. The forms of 
the church are forever changing and flowing 
like water, but her great arms are stretched out 
immovable, like the cross. The sword is the 
symbol of her justice, the censer is the symbol 
of her adoration, and both bear the marks of 
time and strife. The drops that fall from her 
hands are the water baptism, and the fish is 
the ancient sign of the name of Christ. 

The three Queens who sit up aloft are the 
theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. 

It is a fine piece of work from the mystical 
standpoint; elaborate, spiritual, suggestive, and 
full of true philosophy; Ambrogio Lorenzetti 
might have painted it. But after all, it has 
little or nothing to do with the substance of 
the poem. The watery Lady stands like a 
painted figure on the wall, and the three Queens 
play no real part in the life of Arthur. Ap- 
parently they continue to sit upon the cornice 
in ornamental idleness while the King loves and 
toils and fights and “ drees his weird; 5 ’ and 
we are almost surprised at their unwonted ac- 
281 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


tivity when they appear at last in the black 
barge and carry him away to the island-valley 
of Avilion. 

There is another passage of the same char- 
acter in “The Holy Grail,” which describes 
the probations of Percivale. He is allured from 
his quest, first by appetite under the figure of 
an orchard full of pleasant fruits, then by do- 
mestic love under the figure of a fair woman 
spinning at a cottage door, then by wealth under 
the figure of a knight clad in gold and jewels, 
then by fame under the figure of a mighty city 
filled with shouts of welcome and applause; 
but all these are only visions, and when they 
vanish at Percivale’s approach we cannot feel 
that there was any reality in his trials, or that 
he deserves any great credit for resisting them. 

The most distinct example of this kind of 
work is found in “Gareth and Lynette,” in the 
description of the carving on the rock. There 
are five figures of armed men. Phosphorous, 
Meridies, Hesperus, Nox, and Mors, all chasing 
the human soul, — 

A shape that fled 

With broken wings, torn raiment and loose hair. 

For help and shelter to the hermit's cave. 

This is definitely called an allegory, and its 
significance is explained as 

The war of Time against the soul of man. 

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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


But there is all the difference in the world be- 
tween these graven images and the brave boy 
Gareth riding through the forest with the bright, 
petulant, audacious maiden Lynette. If the 
former are properly* called allegorical, the latter 
must certainly be described by some other ad- 
jective. Gareth is alive, very much alive in- 
deed, in his ambition to become a knight, in 
his quarrel with Sir Kay the crabbed seneschal, 
in his sturdy courtship of the damsel with “the 
cheek of apple-blossom,” in his conflict with 
the four caitiffs who kept Lyonors shut up in 
her castle. We follow his adventures with such 
interest that we are fairly vexed with the poet 
for refusing to tell us at the end whether this 
cheerful companion and good fighter married 
Lynette or her elder sister. 

We must distinguish, then, between the alle- 
gorical fragments which Tennyson has woven 
into his work, and the substance of the Idylls; 
between the scenery and mechanical appliances, 
and the actors who move upon the stage. The 
attempt to interpret the poem as a strict alle- 
gory breaks down at once and spoils the story. 
Suppose you say that Arthur is the Conscience, 
and Guinevere is the Flesh, and Merlin is the 
Intellect; then pray what is Lancelot, and 
what is Geraint, and what is Vivien? What 
business has the Conscience to fall in love with 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


the Flesh? What attraction has Vivien for 
the Intellect without any passions? If Merlin 
is not a man, “Que diable allait-il faire dans 
cette galere ?” The whole affair becomes absurd, 
unreal, incomprehensible, uninteresting. 

But when we take the King and his people 
as men and women, when we put ourselves into 
the story and let it carry us along, then we un- 
derstand that it is a parable; that is to say, 
it casts beside itself an image, a reflection, of 
something spiritual, just as a man walking in 
the sunlight is followed by his shadow. It is 
a tale of human life, and therefore, being told 
with a purpose, it 

Shadows Sense at war. with Soul. 

Let us take up this idea of the conflict be- 
tween sense and soul and carry it out through 
the Idylls . 

Arthur is intended to be a man in whom the 
spirit has already conquered and reigns su- 
preme. It is upon this that his kingship rests. 
His task is to bring his realm into harmony 
with himself, to build up a spiritual and social 
order upon which his own character, as the 
best and highest, shall be impressed. In other 
words, he works for the uplifting and purifica- 
tion of humanity. It is the problem of civiliza- 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


tion. His great enemies in this task are not 
outward and visible, — the heathen, — for these 
he overcomes and expels. But the real foes 
that oppose him to the end are the evil passions 
in the hearts of men and women about him. 
So long as these exist and dominate human 
lives, the dream of a perfected society must re- 
main unrealised; and when they get the upper 
hand, even its beginnings will be destroyed. 
But the conflict is not an airy, abstract strife; 
it lies in the opposition between those in whom 
the sensual principle is regnant and those in 
whom the spiritual principle is regnant, and in 
the inward struggle of the noble heart against 
the evil and of the sinful heart against the good. 

This contest may be traced through its dif- 
ferent phases in the successive stories which 
make up the poem. 

In “The Coming of Arthur,” doubt, which 
judges by the senses, is matched against faith, 
which follows the spirit. The question is whether 
Arthur is a pretender and the child of shame- 
fulness, or the true King. Against him, stand 
the base-minded lords and barons who are ready 
to accept any evil story of his origin rather 
than accept him as their ruler. For him, stand 
such knights as Bedivere, — 

For bold in heart and act and word was he 
Whenever slander breathed against the King. 

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Between the two classes stands Leodogran, the 
father of Guinevere, uncertain whether to be- 
lieve or doubt. The arguments of the clever 
Queen Bellicent do not convince him. But at 
last he has a dream in which he sees the King 
standing out in heaven, crowned, — and faith 
conquers. Guinevere is given to Arthur as his 
wife. His throne is securely established, and 
his reign begins prosperously. 

Then comes “Gareth and Lynette.” Here 
the conflict is between a true ambition and a 
false pride. Gareth is an honest, ardent fellow 
who longs for “good fame and renommee.” 
He wishes to rise in the world, but he is willing 
to work and fight his way upward; even to 
serve as a kitchen-knave if so he may win his 
spurs at last and ride among the noble knights 
of the Round Table. His conception of nobil- 
ity grasps the spirit of it without caring much 
for the outward form. Lynette is a “society 
girl,” a worshipper of rank and station; brave, 
high-spirited, lovable, but narrow-minded, and 
scornful of every one who lacks the visible marks 
of distinction. She judges by the senses. She 
cannot imagine that a man who comes appar- 
ently from among the lower classes can possibly 
be a knight, and despises Gareth’s proffered 
services. But his pride, being true, is stronger 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


than hers, being false. He will not be rebuffed; 
follows her, fights her battles, wins first her 
admiration, then her love, and brings her at 
last to see that true knighthood lies not in the 
name but in the deed. 

The atmosphere of this Idyll is altogether 
pure and clear. There is as yet no shadow of 
the storm that is coming to disturb Arthur’s 
realm. The chivalry of the spirit wins its vic- 
tory in a natural, straightforward, joyous way, 
and all goes well with the world. 

But in “Geraint and Enid” there is a cloud 
upon the sky, a trouble in the air. The fatal 
love of Lancelot and Guinevere has already 
begun to poison the court with suspicions and 
scandals. It is in this brooding and electrical 
atmosphere that jealousy, in the person of Ge- 
raint, comes into conflict with loyalty, in the 
person of Enid. The story is the same that 
Boccaccio has told so exquisitely in the tale of 
“Griselda,” and Shakespeare so tragically in 
Othello , — the story of a woman, sweet and 
true and steadfast down to the very bottom of 
her heart, joined to a man who is exacting and 
suspicious. Geraint wakens in the morning to 
find his wife weeping, and leaps at once to the 
conclusion that she is false. He judges by the 
sense and not by the soul. But Enid loves him 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


too well even to defend herself against him. 
She obeys his harsh commands and submits to 
his heavy, stupid tests. Yet even in her obe- 
dience she distinguishes between the sense and 
the spirit. As long as there is no danger she 
rides before him in silence as he told her to do; 
but when she sees the robbers waiting in ambush 
she turns back to warn him: 

I needs must disobey him for his good; 

How should I dare obey him to his harm? 

Needs must I speak , and tho 9 he kill me for it , 

I save a life dearer to me than mine . 

So they move onward through many perils 
and adventures, she like a bright, clear, steady 
flame, he like a dull, smouldering, smoky fire, 
until at last her loyalty conquers his jealousy, 
and he sees that it is better to trust than to 
doubt, and that a pure woman’s love has the 
power to vindicate its own honour against the 
world, and the right to claim an absolute and 
unquestioning confidence. The soul is once 
more victorious over the sense. 

In “Balin and Balan” the cloud has grown 
larger and darker, the hostile influences in the 
realm begin to make themselves more deeply 
felt. The tributary court of Pellam, in which 
the hypocritical old king has taken to holy 
things in rivalry of Arthur, 

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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


And finds himself descended from the Saint 
Arimathean Joseph , 

and collects sacred relics, and drives out all 
women from his palace lest he should be pol- 
luted, while his son and heir, Garlon, is a secret 
libertine and murderer, — is a picture of religion 
infected by asceticism. Balin and Balan are 
two brothers, alike in daring, in strength, in 
simplicity, but differing in this: Balin is called 
“the savage,” swift in impulse, fierce in anger, 
unable to restrain or guide himself; Balan is 
master of his passion, clear-hearted and self- 
controlled, his brother’s better angel. Both 
men represent force; but one is force under 
dominion of soul, the other is force under do- 
minion of sense. By the falsehood of Vivien, 
who now appears on the scene, they are involved 
in conflict and ignorantly give each other mor- 
tal wounds. It would seem as if violence had 
conquered. And yet, in truth not so. Balin’s 
last words are: — 

Goodnight l for we shall never bid again 
Goodmorrow — Dark my doom was here, and dark 
It will be there. 

But Balan replies with a diviner faith, draw- 
ing his brother upward in death even as he had 
done in life, — 

Goodnight , true brother here 1 goodmorrow there 1 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

Thus far the higher principle has been vic- 
torious, though in the last instance the victory 
is won only in the moment of an apparent de- 
feat. But now, in “ Merlin and Vivien,” sense 
becomes the victor. The old magician is a man 
in whom the intellect appears to be supreme. 
One might think him almost impregnable to 
temptation. But the lissome snake Vivien, also 
a type of keen and subtle intelligence, though 
without learning, finds the weak point in his 
armour, overcomes him and degrades him to 
her helpless thrall. 

The conflict in “Lancelot and Elaine” is be- 
tween a pure, virgin love and a guilty passion. 
The maid of Astolat is the lily of womanhood. 
The Queen is the rose, full-blown and heavy 
with fragrance. Never has a sharper contrast 
been drawn than this: Elaine in her innocent 
simplicity and singleness of heart; Guinevere 
in her opulence of charms, her intensity, her 
jealous devotion. Between the two stands the 
great Sir Lancelot, a noble heart though erring. 
If he were free he would turn to the pure love. 
But he is not free; he is bound by ties which 
are interwoven with all that seems most precious 
in his life. He could not break them if he would. 
And so the guilty passion conquers and he turns 
back to the fatal sweetness of his old allegiance. 

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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


“The Holy Grail” shows us the strife be- 
tween superstition, which is a sensual religion, 
and true faith, which is spiritual. This is in 
some respects the richest of the Idylls , but it 
is also, by reason of its theme, the most con- 
fused. Out of the mystical twilight which en- 
velops the action this truth emerges: that those 
knights who thought of the Grail only as an 
external wonder, a miracle which they fain 
would see because others had seen it, “followed 
wandering fires;” while those to whom it be- 
came a symbol of inward purity and grace, 
like Galahad and Percivale and even the dull, 
honest, simple-minded Bors and the sin-tor- 
mented Lancelot, finally attained unto the 
vision. But the King, who remained at home 
and kept the plain path of daily duty, is the 
real hero of the Idyll, though he bore no part 
in the quest. 

In “Pelleas and Ettarre” the victory falls 
back to the side of sense. Pelleas is the counter- 
part of Elaine, a fair soul who has no thought 
of evil. Amid the increasing darkness of the 
court he sees nothing but light. He dreams 
that the old ideals of chivalry are still unbroken; 
to him all ladies are perfect, and all knights 
loyal. He is in love with loving, amans amare> 
as St. Augustine put it, — and when Ettarre 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


crosses his track he worships her as a star. But 
she — “of the earth, earthy” — despises him as 
a child, mocks him, and casts him off. Gawain, 
the flower of courtesy, betrays him basely. 
Driven mad by scorn and treason, he rushes 
away at last into the gloom, — a gallant knight 
overthrown by the perfidy of a wicked world. 

The fool is the hero of “The Last Tourna- 
ment.” He knows that Arthur’s dream will 
never be fulfilled, knows that the Queen is false, 
and the Knights are plotting treason, and the 
whole realm is on the verge of ruin; but still 
he holds fast to his master, and believes in him, 
and will not break his allegiance to follow the 
downward path of the court. Arthur has lifted 
him out of the baseness of his old life and made 
him a man. Maimed wits and crippled body, 
yet he has a soul, — this little, loyal jester, — and 
he will not lose it. 

I have had my day and my philosophies , — 

And thank the Lord I am King Arthur’s fool . 

In contrast to him stands Sir Tristram, the 
most brilliant and powerful of the new knights 
who followed the King only for glory, and 
despised him in their hearts, and broke his 
vows as if they had never sworn them. Poet, 
musician, huntsman, warrior, perfect in face 
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IDYLLS OF THE KING 


and form, victor in love and war, Tristram is 
one to whom faith is foolishness and the higher 
life an idle delusion. He denies his soul, mocks 
at it, flings it away from him. 

New leafy new life — the days of frost are o'er: 

New life, new love, to suit the newer day; 

New loves are sweet as those that went before: 

Free love— free field — we love but while we may . 

In him the triumph of the senses is complete. 
He wins the prize in the “Tournament of the 
Dead Innocence,” and the shouts of the people 
hail him as their favourite. He clasps the jewels 
around the neck of Isolt as she sits with him in 
her tower of Tintagil by the sea, lightly glory- 
ing in his conquests. But out of the darkness 
the battle-axe of the craven King Mark strikes 
him dead. Meanwhile, at Gamelot, Arthur 
comes home; Guinevere has fled; — 

And while he climb'd. 

All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom , 

The stairway to the hall, and look'd and saw 
The great Queen's bower was dark, — about his feet 
A voice clung sobbing till he question'd it, 

“ What are thou?" and the voice about his feet 
Sent up an answer, sobbing, “I am thy fool. 

And I shall never make thee smile again." 

Yes, a fool, but also a soul, faithful even unto 
death, and therefore shining steadfastly like a 
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star when the false meteor of sense has dropt 
into endless night. 

The next Idyll should be called “ Arthur 
and Guinevere.” The conflict now draws to 
its final issue. It lies between these two: one 
the victim of a great sin, a crime of sense which 
chose the lower rather than the higher love; 
the other the hero of a great faith, which knows 
that pardon follows penitence, and seeks to 
find some light of hope for the fallen. Is Guine- 
vere to be separated from Arthur forever? — 
that is the question whose answer hangs upon 
the issue of this struggle. And the Queen her- 
self tells us the result, when she says, — 

Ah, great and gentle lord. 

Who wast, as is the conscience of a saint 
Among his warring senses, to thy knights — 

. . . Now I see thee what thou art, 

Thou art the highest and most human too , 

Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none 
Will tell the King I love him tho 9 so late ? 

Now — ere he goes to that great Battle? none: 

Myself must tell him in that purer life , 

But now it were too daring . 

In “The Passing of Arthur” we have a pic- 
ture of the brave man facing death. All the 
imagery of the poem is dark and shadowy. The 
great battle has been fought; the Round Table 
294 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


has been shattered; the bodies of the slain lie 
upon the field, friends and foes mingled together, 
and not a voice to stir the silence. 

Only the wan wave 
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro 
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down 
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen. 

And shiver’d brands that once had fought with Rome , 
And rolling far along the gloomy shores 
The voice of days of old and days to be. 

This is the tide of Time which engulfs all things 
mortal. Arthur’s hour has come: he has lived 
his life and must pass away. To Sir Bedivere, 
valiant, simple-hearted knight, but still unable 
to look beyond the outward appearance of death, 
this seems a fatal end of all his hopes. He cannot 
bear to cast away his master’s sword, but would 
fain keep it as a relic. He cries: — 

Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? 

Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? 

For now 1 see the true old times are dead; 


But now the whole Round Table is dissolved 
Which was an image of the mighty world. 

And I, the last, go forth companionless. 

And the days darken round me, and the years 
Among new men, strange faces, other minds. 

But the soul of Arthur is stronger, clearer- 
sighted. In this last conflict with the senses he 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


is victorious. He answers Bedivere, with heroic 
confidence, that death does not end all. 

The old order changeth , yielding 'place to new , 

And God fulfils himself in many ways 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

He believes that by prayer 

the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

He enters fearlessly upon the mysterious voyage 
into the future. And as the barge floats with 
him out of sight, from beyond the light of the 
horizon there come 

Sounds as if some fair city were one voice 
Around a king returning from his wars. 

Thus the conflict is ended, and the victorious 
soul enters its rest. 

What shall we say of this picture of life which 
Tennyson has given us in his greatest poem? 
Is it true? Does it grasp the facts and draw 
from them their real lesson ? 

First of all, I think we must admit that there 
is a serious defect in the very place where it is 
most to be regretted, — in the character of Ar- 
thur. He is too faultless for perfection. Tenny- 
son either meant to paint a man who never 
had any conflict with himself, which is impos- 
296 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


sible; or he intended to exhibit a man in whom 
the conflict had been fought out, in which case 
Arthur surely would have borne some of the 
scars of contest, shown some sense of personal 
imperfection, manifested a deeper feeling of 
comprehension and compassion for others in 
their temptations. But he appears to regard 
his own character and conduct as flawless. 

Even in that parting interview with Guine- 
vere — one of the most lofty passages in litera- 
ture — his bearing verges perilously on sublime 
self-complacency. He shows no consciousness 
of any defect on his own part. He acts and 
speaks as if he were far above reproach. 

But was that possible? Could such a catas- 
trophe have come without blame on both sides ? 
Guinevere was but a girl when she left her 
father’s court. It was natural — yes, and it 
was right — that she should desire warmth and 
colour in her life. She rode among the flowers 
in May with Lancelot. Is it any wonder that 
she found delight in the journey? She was 
married to the solemn King before the stateliest 
of Britain’s altar-shrines with pompous cere- 
monies. Is it any wonder that she was oppressed 
and made her vows with drooping eyes? And 
then, at once, the King began his state-banquets 
and negotiations with the Roman ambassadors. 
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He was absorbed in the affairs of his kingdom. 
He left the young Queen to herself, — and to 
Lancelot. The King seemed to be ‘ dreaming 
of fame while woman woke to love/ Is it 
strange that she thought him cold, neglectful, 
irresponsive, and said to herself, “He cares 
not for me”? Is it to be marvelled at that 
she found an outlet for her glowing heart in her 
companionship with Lancelot ? Perhaps Ar- 
thur’s conduct was inevitable for one immersed 
as he was in the cares of state; perhaps he was 
unconscious that he was exposing his wife, de- 
fenceless and alone, to a peril from which he 
only could have protected her; but when at 
last the consequence was discovered, he was 
bound to confess that he had a share in the 
transgression and the guilt. It is the want of 
this note that mars his parting speech. A little 
more humanity would have compensated for a 
little less piety. Had Arthur been a truer hus- 
band, Guinevere might have been a more faith- 
ful wife. The excess of virtue is a vice. The 
person who feels no consciousness of sin must 
be either more or less than man. 

This is the worst defect of the Idylls , — 
that the central character comes so near to 
being 

Faultily faultless , icily regular , splendidly null . 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


But this fault is partly compensated by the 
fact that the poem, after all, does recognise, 
and bring out in luminous splendour, the great 
truths of human life. 

The first of these truths is that sin is the cause 
of disorder and misery, and until it is overcome 
the perfect society cannot be securely estab- 
lished. And by sin Tennyson does not mean 
the desire of existence, but the transgression 
of law. The right to live — the right to desire 
to live — is not denied for a moment. It is in 
fact distinctly asserted. But life must be ac- 
cording to righteousness, if it is to be harmonious 
and happy. 

Love is the motive force of the poem. The 
King himself acknowledges its dominion, and 
says, — 

For saving I be join'd 
To her that is the fairest under heaven , 

I seem as nothing in the mighty world , 

And cannot will my will , nor work my work 
Wholly , nor make myself , in mine own realm , 

Victor and lord. 

But love also must move within the bounds of 
law, must be true to its vows. Not even the 
strongest and most beautiful soul may follow 
the guidance of passion without restraint; for 
the greater the genius, the beauty, the power, 
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of those who transgress, the more fatal will 
be the influence of their sin upon other lives. 

This indeed is the meaning of the fall of 
Lancelot and Guinevere. It was because they 
stood so high, because they were so glorious 
in their manhood and womanhood, that their 
example had power to infect the court. 

Sin is the principle of disintegration and 
death. It is this that corrupts societies, and 
brings about the decline and fall of nations; 
and so long as sin dwells in the heart of man 
all efforts to create a perfect state, or even to 
establish an order like the Round Table in self- 
perpetuating security, must fail. The redemp- 
tion and purification of the earth is a long task, 
beyond human strength; as Tennyson has said 
in “Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After/’ — 

Ere she reach her heavenly-best a God must mingle with the 
game. 

But side by side with this truth, and in per- 
fect harmony with it, Tennyson teaches that 
the soul of man has power to resist and con- 
quer sin within its own domain, to triumph 
over sense by steadfast loyalty to the higher 
nature, and thus to achieve peace and final 
glory. When I say he teaches this, I do not 
mean that he sets it forth in any formal way 
300 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 

as a doctrine. I mean that he shows it in the 
life of Arthur as a fact. The King chooses his 
ideal, and follows it, and it lifts him up and 
sets him on his course like a star. His life is 
not a failure, as it has been called, but a glorious 
success, for it demonstrates the freedom of the 
will and the strength of the soul against the 
powers of evil and the fate of sin. 

Finally, the Idylls bring out the profound 
truth that there is a vicarious element in human 
life, and that no man lives to himself alone. 
The characters are distinct, but they are not 
isolated. They are parts of a vast organism, 
all bound together, all influencing one another. 

The victory of sense over soul is not a soli- 
tary conquest; it has far-reaching results. The 
evil lives of Modred, of Vivien, of Tristram, 
spread like a poison through the court. 

But no less fruitful, no less far-reaching, is 
the victory of soul over sense. Gareth, and 
Enid, and Balan, and Bors, and Bedivere, and 
Galahad, have power to help and to uplift others. 
Their lives are not wasted: nor does Arthur 
himself live in vain, though his Round Table is 
dissolved: for he is “ joined to her that is the 
fairest under heaven,” not for a time only, but 
forever. His faith triumphs over her sin. Guine- 
vere is not lost; she is redeemed by love. From 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

the darkness of the convent at Almesbury, 
where she lies weeping in the dust, we hear a 
voice like that which thrills through the prison 
of Marguerite in Faust. The fiend mutters. 
She is lost! But the angel cries, She is saved! 


302 


VIII 

THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


HPHE appearance of Tennyson, in 1875, as a 
dramatic poet was a surprise. It is true 
that he had already shown that his genius was 
versatile and disposed to explore new methods 
of expression. True, also, that from the year 
1842 a dramatic tendency had been manifest 
in his works. “Ulysses,” “St. Simeon Stylites,” 
“Love and Duty,” “Locksley Hall,” “Lucre- 
tius,” “The Northern Farmer,” “The Grand- 
mother,” different as they are in style, are all 
essentially dramatic monologues. Maud is 
rightly entitled, in the late editions, a Mono- 
drama. The Princess has been put upon the 
amateur stage in very pretty fashion; and the 
success of Mr. George Parsons Lathrop’s acting 
version of “Elaine” proved not only his own 
ability, but also the dramatic quality of that 
splendid Idyll. 

But not even these hints that Tennyson had 
a creative impulse not yet fully satisfied were 
clear enough to prepare the world for his at- 
tempt to master another form of art. He was 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


acknowledged as a great artist in lyric and idyllic 
poetry. People were not ready to see him come 
out in the seventh decade of his life in a new 
character, and take the stage as a dramatist. 
It seemed like an attempt to compete with his 
own fame already won. 

The first feeling of the public at the produc- 
tion of Queen Mary was undisguised astonish- 
ment. With this a good deal of displeasure was 
mingled. For the public, after all, is not fond 
of surprises. Having formed its opinion of a 
great man, and labelled him once for all as a 
sweet singer, or a sound moralist, or a brilliant 
word-painter, or an interesting story-teller, it 
likes not to consider him in any other light. 
It is confused and puzzled. The commonplaces 
of easy criticism become unavailable for further 
use. People shrink from the effort which is 
required for a new and candid judgment; and 
so they fall back upon stale and unreasonable 
comparisons. They say, “Why does the ex- 
cellent cobbler go beyond his last? The old 
songs were admirable. Why does not the poet 
give us more of them, instead of trying us with 
a play ? ” 

Thus it came to pass that Queen Mary was 
received with general dissatisfaction; respect- 
ful, of course, because it was the work of a 
304 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


famous man; but upon the whole the public 
was largely indifferent, and said in a tone of 
polite authority that the new drama was not 
nearly as powerful as Hamlet or Macbeth, nor 
as melodious even as “CEnone” and “The 
Lotos-Eaters.” A like fate befell Harold in 
1877, except that a few critics began to feel the 
scruples of literary conscience, and made an 
honest effort to judge the drama on its own 
merits. 

The Falcon , a play founded upon Boccac- 
cio’s well-known story, was produced in 1879, 
and the accomplished Mrs. Kendal, as the 
heroine, made it at least a partial success. 
In 1881 The Cup, a dramatisation of an in- 
cident narrated in Plutarch’s treatise De Mu - 
lierum Virtutibus , was brought out at the 
Lyceum with Mr. Henry Irving and Miss Ellen 
Terry in the principal roles. It received hearty 
and general applause, and was by far the most 
popular of Tennyson’s dramas. But its effect 
upon his fame as a playwright was more than 
counterbalanced by the grievous failure of The 
Promise of May in 1882. This piece was in- 
tended to be an exposure of the pernicious in- 
fluences of modern secularism. It was upon 
the whole a dismal bit of work. Not even the 
eccentric conduct of the Marquis of Queens- 
305 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


bury, who rose from his seat at one of the per- 
formances and violently protested against the 
play as a libel upon the free-thinkers of Eng- 
land, availed to give it more than a momentary 
notoriety. 

At the close of the year 1884 Tennyson pub- 
lished the longest and most ambitious of his 
dramas, Bechet , with a distinct avowal that 
it was “not intended in its present form to meet 
the exigencies of the modern stage.” The wis- 
dom of this limitation is evident. It contains 
also a shrewd hint of criticism on the present 
taste of the average play-goer. There is a de- 
mand for pungent realism, for startling effect, 
for exaggerated action easy to be followed, and 
for a sharp climax in a striking tableau, — in 
short, for a play which stings the nerves with- 
out taxing the mind. Even Shakespeare has 
to be revised to meet these exigencies. To win 
success nowadays the dramatist must take 
the stage-manager into partnership. When 
Bechet was put on the stage, successfully, by 
Henry Irving, in 1891, it was submitted to 
these conditions. But there is a higher standard. 
We may consider Queen Mary , Harold , and 
Bechet , from another point of view, as dramas 
not for acting, but for reading. 

It seems to me that this consideration is a 
306 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


debt of honour which we owe to the poet. These 
tragedies are not to be dismissed as the mis- 
takes and follies of an over-confident and fatally 
fluent genius. A poet like Tennyson does not 
make three such mistakes in succession. They 
are not the idle recreations of one who has 
finished his life-work and retired. They are 
not the feeble and mechanical productions of 
a man in his dotage. On the contrary, they 
are full of fire and force; and if they err at all 
it is on the side of exuberance. Their intensity 
of passion and overflow of feeling make them 
sometimes turbulent and harsh and incoherent. 
They would do more if they attempted less. 
And yet in spite of their occasional overloading 
and confusion they have a clear and strong 
purpose which makes them worthy of careful 
study. The judgment of a critic so intelligent 
as George Eliot is not to be disregarded, and 
she expressed her opinion that ‘‘Tennyson’s 
plays run Shakespeare’s close.” 

The point of view from which they must be 
regarded is that of historical tragedy. By this 
I mean a tragedy which involves not only in- 
dividuals, but political parties and warring 
classes of society. Its object is to trace the 
fate of individuals as it affects the fate of na- 
tions; to exhibit the conflict of opposing char- 
307 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


acters not for themselves alone, but as the 
exponents of those great popular forces and 
movements which play beneath the surface; to 
throw the vivid colours of life into the black 
and white outlines on the screen of history and 
show that the figures are not mere shadows but 
human beings of like passions with ourselves. 

Tennyson’s dramatic trilogy is a picture of 
the Making of England. The three periods of 
action are chosen with the design of touching 
the most critical points of the long struggle. 
The three plots are so developed as to bring 
into prominence the vital issues of the strife. 
And the different characters, almost without 
exception, are exhibited as the representatives 
of the different races and classes and faiths 
which were contending for supremacy. Let us 
take up the plays in their historical order. 

In Harold we see the close of that fierce 
triangular duel between the Saxons, the Danes, 
and the Normans, which resulted in the Norman 
conquest and the binding of England, still Saxon 
at heart, to the civilization of the Continent. 
The crisis of the drama is the second scene of 
the second act, where Harold, a prisoner in 
the Palace of Bayeux, is cajoled and threatened 
and deceived by William into swearing an oath 
to help him to the crown of England. The 
308 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 

fierce subtlety of the Norman is matched against 
the simplicity and frankness of the Saxon. Craft 
triumphs. Harold discovers that he has sworn, 
not merely by the jewel of St. Pancratius, on 
which his hand was laid, but by the sacred bones 
of the saints concealed beneath it, — an oath 
which admits of no evasion, the breaking of 
which afterwards breaks his faith in himself 
and makes him fight the battle of Senlac as a 
man foredoomed to death. Both William and 
Harold are superstitious. But William’s super- 
stition is of a kind which enables him to use 
religion as his tool; Harold’s goes only far 
enough to weaken his heart and make him 
tremble before the monk even while he defies 
him. Harold is the better man; William is 
the more potent ruler. His words over the 
body of his fallen rival on the battlefield are 
prophetic of the result of the Norman con- 
quest: — 

Since I knew battle , 

And that was from my boyhood, never yet — 

No, by the splendour of God — have I fought men 

Like Harold and his brethren and his guard 

Of English. Every man about his king 

Fell where he stood. They loved him: and pray God 

My Normans may but move as true with me 

To the door of death. Of one self -stock at first. 

Make them again one people — Norman, English; 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


And English , Norman; — we should have a hand 
To grasp the world with 9 and a foot to stamp it . . . 
Flat. Praise the Saints. It is over. No more blood l 
I am king of England , so they thwart me not , 

And I will rule according to their laws. 

It is worth recalling, in this connection, that 
Tennyson himself was of Norman descent. 
Yet surely there never was a man more thor- 
hly English than he. 



X'Tn Bechet we are spectators of a conflict 
less familiar, but more interesting and impor- 
tant, — the conflict between the church and the 
crown, between the ecclesiastical and the royal 
prerogatives, which shook England to the centre 
for many years, and out of the issues of which 
her present constitution has grown. 

In this conflict the Papacy played a much 
smaller part than we usually imagine; and 
religion, until the closing scenes, played prac- 
tically no part at all. It was in fact a struggle 
for supreme authority in temporal affairs. First 
the king was contending against the nobility, 
and the church took sides with the king. Then 
the king attempted to subjugate the people, 
and the church, having become essentially Eng- 
lish, took sides with the people. Then the nobles 
combined against the king, and the church took 
sides with the nobles. Then the king revolted 


310 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


from the foreign domination of the church, and 
the people took sides with the king. Then the 
king endeavoured to use the church to crush 
the people, and the people under Cromwell rose 
against church and king and broke the double 
yoke. Then the people brought back the king, 
and he tried to reinstate the church as an in- 
strument of royal absolutism. But the day for 
that was past. After another struggle, pro- 
longed and bitter, but in the main bloodless, 
the English church lost almost the last vestige 
of temporal authority, and the English king- 
dom became simply “a crowned republic.” 

Now the point at which Bechet touches 
this long conflict is the second stage. King 
Henry II., Count of Anjou, surnamed “Plan- 
tagenet,” owed his throne to the church. It 
was the influence of the English bishops, espe- 
cially of Theobald, Anselm’s great successor in 
the See of Canterbury, which secured Henry’s 
succession to the crown of his cousin and enemy. 
King Stephen. But the wild, wicked blood of 
Anjou was too strong in Henry for him to re- 
main faithful to such an alliance. He was a 
thoroughly irreligious man: not only dissolute 
in life and cruel in temper, but also destitute 
of the sense of reverence, which sometimes 
exists even in immoral men. He spent his time 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


at church in looking at picture-books and whis- 
pering with his friends. He despised and neg- 
lected the confessional. He broke out, in his 
passionate fits, into the wildest imprecations 
against God. The fellowship of the church 
was distasteful to him; and even the bond of 
gratitude to so good a man as Archbishop Theo- 
bald was too irksome to be borne. 

Moreover he had gotten from the church all 
that he wanted. He was now the most mighty 
monarch in Christendom. His foot was on the 
neck of the nobles. The royal power had broken 
down the feudal, and stood face to face with 
the ecclesiastical, as its only rival. The Eng- 
lish Church, whose prerogative made her in 
effect the supreme judge and ruler over all the 
educated classes (that is to say over all who 
could read and write and were thus entitled to 
claim “the benefit of clergy”), was the only 
barrier in Henry’s path to an unlimited mon- 
archy. He resolved that this obstacle must be 
removed. He would brook no rivalry in Eng- 
land, not even in the name of God. And there- 
fore he thrust his bosom-friend, his boon-com- 
panion, his splendid chancellor, Thomas Becket, 
into the Archbishopric of Canterbury, hoping 
to find in him a willing and skilful ally in 
the subjugation of the church to the throne. 

312 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


Becket’s rebellion and Henry’s wrath form the 
plot of Tennyson’s longest and best drama. 

The character of Becket is one of the stand- 
ing riddles of history. He compels our admira- 
tion by his strength, his audacity, his success 
in everything that he undertook. He is one 
of those men who are so intensely virile that 
they remain alive after they are dead: we can- 
not be indifferent to him: we are for him or 
against him. At the same time he perplexes us 
and stimulates our wonder to the highest pitch 
by the consistent inconsistencies and harmonious 
contradictions of his character. The son of an 
obscure London merchant; the proudest and 
most accomplished of England’s chivalrous 
youth; a student of theology in the University of 
Paris; the favourite pupil of the good Archbishop 
Theobald; the boon-companion of the riotous 
King Henry; a skilful diplomatist; the best 
horseman and boldest knight of the court; the 
hatred of the nobles, and the delight of the 
peasantry; the most lavish and luxurious, the 
most chaste and laborious, of English grandees; 
the most devout and ascetic, the most ambitious 
and the least selfish, of English bishops; as un- 
wearied in lashing his own back with the scourge 
as he had been in smiting his country’s enemies 
with the sword; as much at home in sackcloth 
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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


as in purple and fine linen; the prince of dandies 
and of devotees; the king’s most faithful servant 
and most daring rival, most darling friend and 
most relentless foe, — what was this Becket? 
hero or villain? martyr or criminal? true man 
or traitor? worldling or saint? 

Tennyson gives us his key to the riddle in 
the opening scene of the drama. The King 
and Becket are playing at chess. The King’s 
fancy is wandering; he is thinking and talking 
of a hundred different things. But Becket is 
intent upon the game; he cannot bear to do 
anything which he does not do well; he pushes 
steadily forward and wins. 

I think this scene gives us the secret of 
Becket’s personality. An eager desire to be 
perfect in whatever part he took, an impulse to 
lead and conquer in every sphere that he entered, 
— this was what Henry failed to understand. 
He did not see that in transforming this intense 
and absolute man from a chancellor into an 
archbishop, he was giving him a new part in 
which his passion for thoroughness would make 
him live up to all its requirements and become 
the most inflexible defender of the church against 
the encroachment of the throne. 

But Becket understood himself and foresaw 
the conflict into which the King’s plan would 
314 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 

plunge him. He knew that for him a change of 
relations meant a change of character. He re- 
sisted the promotion. Tennyson depicts most 
graphically the struggle in his mind. When 
Henry first broaches the subject, Becket an- 
swers: 

Mock me not. 1 am not even a monk. 

Thy jest — no more / Why, look , is this a sleeve 
For an archbishop ? 

But Henry lays his hand on the richly em- 
broidered garment, and says: 

But the arm within 

Is BeckeTs who hath beaten down my foes. 

I lack a spiritual soldier , Thomas , 

A man of this world and the next to boot. 

Now this is just what Thomas can never be. 
To either world he can belong, but not to both. 
He can change, but he cannot compromise. 
While he is the defender of the throne he is 
serviceable and devoted to the King; when he 
becomes the leader of the Church he will be 
equally absorbed in her service. 

The drama exhibits this strange transforma- 
tion and its consequences. Forced by the ur- 
gency of the headstrong King, and persuaded 
by a message from the death-bed of his former 
friend and master Theobald, Becket yields at 
315 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


last and accepts the mitre. From this moment 
he is another man. With all his doubts as to 
his fitness for the sacred office, he has now given 
himself up to it, heart and soul. The tremen- 
dous mediaeval idea of the Catholic Church as 
the visible kingdom of God upon earth takes 
possession of him. He sees also that the issue 
of the political conflict in England depends 
upon the church, which is the people’s “tower 
of strength, their bulwark against Throne and 
Baronage.” He feels that he is called to be the 
champion of the cause of God and the people. 

I am the man. 

And yet 1 seem appall'd , — on such a sudden 
At such an eagle height I stand , and see 
The rift that runs between me and the king. 

I serv'd our Theobald well when I was with him; 

1 serv'd King Henry well when I was Chancellor; 

1 am his no more , and 1 must serve the church. 

And all my doubts I fling from me like dust , 

Winnow and scatter all scruples to the wind f 
And all the puissance of the warrior , 

And all the wisdom of the Chancellor , 

And all the heap'd experiences of life , 

I cast upon the side of Canterbury , — 

Our holy mother Canterbury , who sits 
With tatter'd robes . 

Here 

1 gash myself asunder from the king , 

Though leaving each a wound: mine own , a grief 

316 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


To show the scar forever — his , a hate 
Not ever to he healed. 

Both of these predictions are fulfilled: and 
herein lies the interest of the drama. All 
through the conflict between the monarch and 
the prelate, Becket’s inflexible resistance to 
the royal commands is maintained only at the 
cost of a perpetual struggle with his great per- 
sonal love for Henry, and Henry’s resolve to 
conquer the stubborn archbishop is inflamed 
and embittered by the thought that Becket 
was once his dearest comrade. It is a tragic 
situation. Tennyson has never shown a deeper 
insight into human nature, than by making 
this single combat between divided friends the 
turning-point of his drama. 

The tragedy is enhanced by the introduction 
of Rosamund de Clifford — the King’s 

One sweet rose of the world. 

Her beauty, her innocence, the childlike con- 
fidence of her affection for the fierce monarch, 
who is gentle only with her and whom she loves 
as her true husband, her songs and merry games 
with her little boy in the hidden bower, fall like 
gleams of summer sunlight into the stormy 
gloom of the play. 


317 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Becket becomes her guardian and protector 
against the cruel, murderous jealousy of Queen 
Eleanor. A most perilous position: . a priest 
charged by the King whom he is resisting with 
the duty of defending and guarding the loveliest 
of women, and keeping her safe and secret for 
a master whom he cannot but condemn. What 
a conflict of duty and desire, of conscience and 
loyalty, of passion and friendship ! How did 
Becket meet it? Did he love Rosamund? 
Would he have loved her if he had not been 
bound by straiter vows? Was there anything 
of disloyalty in his persuading her to flee from 
her bower and take refuge with the nuns at 
Godstow? Tennyson thinks not. He paints 
his hero as a man true to his duty even in this 
sharpest trial; upright, steadfast, fearless, seek- 
ing only to save the woman whom his former 
master loved, and to serve the King even while 
seeming to disobey him. But Henry cannot 
believe it. When he hears of Rosamund’s flight, 
his anger against Becket is poisoned with the 
madness of jealousy. He breaks out with a 
cry of fierce desire for his death. And at this 
hint, four of the Barons, who have long hated 
Becket, set out to assassinate him. 

The final scene in the Cathedral is full of 
strength and splendour. Even here a ray of 
318 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


sweetness falls into the gloom, in the presence 
of Rosamund, praying for Becket in his perils: — 

Save that dear head which now is Canterbury , 

Save him , he saved my life, he saved my child. 

Save him , his blood would darken Henry's name , 
Save him y till all as saintly as thyself y 
He miss the searching flame of Purgatory y 
And pass at once to perfect Paradise . 

But the end is inevitable. Becket meets it as 
fearlessly as he has lived, crying as the blows 
of the assassins fall upon him before the 
altar, — 

At the right hand of Power — 

Power and great glory— for thy church , 0 Lord — 

Into thy hands , 0 Lord — into thy hands — 

Two years afterwards, he was canonised as a 
saint. His tomb became the richest and most 
popular of English shrines. King Henry him- 
self came to it as a pilgrim, and submitted to 
public penance at the grave of the man who 
was too strong for him, even in death. The 
homage of the nation may not prove that Becket 
was a holy martyr, but at least it proves that 
he was one of the first of those great English- 
men “who taught the people to struggle for 
their liberties,” and that Tennyson was right 
in choosing this man as the hero of his noblest 
historic dram; 



319 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


In Queen Mary, we are called to watch the 
third great conflict of England. Church and 
people have triumphed. It has already become 
clear that the English throne must be 

Broad-bas'd upon the people's will, 

and that religion will be a controlling influence 
in the life of the nation. But what type of reli- 
gion? The Papacy and the Reformation have 
crossed swords and are struggling together for 
the possession of the seagirt island. How sharp 
was the contest, how near the friends of Spain 
and Italy came to winning the victory over 
the friends of Germany and Holland and Switzer- 
land, Tennyson has shown in his vivid picture 
of Mary’s reign. 

The characters are sharply drawn. Philip, 
with his icy sensuality and gigantic egotism; 
Gardiner, with his coarse ferocity, 

His big baldness , 

That irritable forelock which he rubs , 

His buzzard beak, and deep incavern' d eyes; 

Reginald Pole, the suave, timorous, selfish ec- 
clesiastic; Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Ralph 
Bagenhall, brave, steadfast, honest men, Eng- 
lish to the core; Cranmer, with his moments 
of weakness and faltering, well atoned for by 
320 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 

his deep faith and humble penitence and heroic 
martyrdom; all these stand out before us like 
living figures against the background of diplo- 
matic intrigue and popular tumult. And Mary 
herself, — never has that unhappy queen, the 
victim of her own intense, passionate delusions, 
had such justice done to her. She came near 
to wrecking England. Tennyson does not let 
us forget that; but he softens our hatred and 
our horror with a touch of human pity for her 
own self-wreck as he shows her sitting upon 
the ground, desolate and desperate, moaning 
for the treacherous Philip in 

A low voice 

Lost in a wilderness where none can hear ! 

A voice of shipwreck on a shoreless sea! 

A low voice from the dust and from the grave. 

The drama which most naturally invites 
comparison with Queen Mary is Shakespeare’s 
Henry VIII. And it seems to me that if we 
lay the two works side by side, Tennyson’s 
suffers a little but not overmuch even by this 
hazardous propinquity. In lyrics, — the inter- 
ludes of the drama, — I would almost dare to 
claim the advantage for Queen Mary. Take 
the song of Queen Catherine: 

Orpheus with his lute made trees 
And the mountain-tops that freeze 

321 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Bow themselves when he did sing: 

To his music plants and flowers 
Ever sprung ; as Sun and showers 
There had made a lasting spring. 

Everything that heard him play 
Even the billows of the sea 

Hung their heads and then lay by. 

In sweet music is such art , 

Killing care and grief of heart 
Fall asleep , or, hearing , die. 

And then read Queen Mary’s song: — 

Hapless doom of woman happy in betrothing ! 

Beauty passes like a breath and love is lost in loathing: 
Low, my lute: speak low, my lute, but say the world is 
nothing — 

Low, lute, low I 

Love will hover round the flowers when they first awaken ; 
Love will fly the fallen leaf and not be overtaken : 

Low, my lute ! oh low, my lute ! we fade and are for- 
saken — 

Low, dear lute, low! 

This is infinitely more pathetic as well as more 
musical than Shakespeare’s stiff little lyric. 

If this comparison seem unfair, then try the 
two dramas by their strength of character- 
painting. Is not Tennyson’s Philip as vivid 
and as consistent as Shakespeare’s Henry ? 
Does not the later Gardiner stand out more 
clearly than the earlier, and the younger Howard 
322 


THE DRAMATIC TRILOGY 


surpass the elder ? Is not the legate Pole more 
lifelike than the legate Campeius ? Is not Cecil’s 
description of Elizabeth more true and sharp, 
though less high-flown, than Cranmer’s? We 
must admit that there are “ purple patches” of 
eloquence, like Wolsey’s famous speech upon 
ambition, in Shakespeare’s work, which are un- 
rivalled. But taken altogether, as an historic 
drama, Queen Mary does not rank far below 
Henry VIII. 

It is not at all likely that Tennyson will be 
remembered chiefly as a dramatist. His short- 
comings are too great, and his rank as a lyrical 
and narrative poet is too high, for that. But 
the wholesale condemnation and neglect of his 
dramatic work is a reproach to the intelligence 
of our critics. J. R. Green, the late historian 
of The English People said that “all his re- 
searches into the annals of the twelfth century 
had not given him so vivid a conception of the 
character of Henry II. and his court as was 
embodied in Tennyson’s Bechet” Backed by 
an authority like this it is not too daring to 
predict that the day is coming when the study 
of Tennyson’s Dramatic Trilogy will be reck- 
oned important to an understanding of Eng- 
lish history. 


323 


IX 

THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

TT is safe to say that there is no other book 
* which has had so great an influence upon 
the literature of the world as the Bible. And 
it is almost as safe — at least with no greater 
danger than that of starting an instructive dis- 
cussion — to say that there is no other literature 
which has felt this influence so deeply or shown 
it so clearly as the English. 

The cause of this latter fact is not far to seek. 
It may be, as a French critic suggests, that it 
is partly due to the inborn and incorrigible 
tendency of the Anglo-Saxon mind to drag 
religion and morality into everything. But 
certainly this tendency would never have taken 
such a distinctly Biblical form had it not been 
for the beauty and vigour of our common Eng- 
lish version of the Scriptures. These qualities 
were felt by the people even before they were 
praised by the critics. Apart from all religious 
prepossessions, men and women and children 
were attracted by the power and grace of the 
book. The English Bible was popular, in the 
324 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


broadest sense, long before it was recognised 
as one of our noblest English classics. It has 
coloured the talk of the household and the street, 
as well as moulded the language of scholars. It 
has been something more than a 44 well of Eng- 
lish undefiled 55 ; it has become a part of the 
spiritual atmosphere. We hear the echoes of 
its speech everywhere; and the music of its 
familiar phrases haunts all the fields and groves 
of our fine literature. 

It is not only to the theologians and the ser- 
mon-makers that we look for Biblical allusions 
and quotations. We often find the very best 
and most vivid of them in writers professedly 
secular. Poets like Shakespeare, Milton, and 
Wordsworth; novelists like Scott and romancers 
like Hawthorne; essayists like Bacon, Steele, 
and Addison; critics of life, unsystematic phi- 
losophers, like Carlyle and Ruskin, — all draw 
upon the Bible as a treasury of illustrations, 
and use it as a book equally familiar to them- 
selves and to their readers. It is impossible to 
put too high a value upon such a universal 
volume, even as a mere literary possession. 
It forms a bond of sympathy between the most 
cultivated and the simplest of the people. The 
same book lies upon the desk of the scholar 
and in the cupboard of the peasant. If you 
325 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


touch upon one of its narratives, every one 
knows what you mean. If you allude to one of 
its characters or scenes, your reader’s memory 
supplies an instant picture to illuminate your 
point. And so long as its words are studied 
by little children at their mothers’ knees and 
recognised by high critics as the model of pure 
English, we may be sure that neither the jargon 
of science nor the slang of ignorance will be 
able to create a verbal barrier to divide the 
people of our common race. There will be a 
medium of communication in the language and 
imagery of the English Bible. 

This much, by way of introduction, I have 
felt it necessary to say, in order to mark the 
spirit of this essay. For the poet whose works 
we are to study is at once one of the most 
scholarly and one of the most widely popular 
of English writers. At least one cause of his 
popularity is that there is so much of the Bible 
in Tennyson. How much, few even of his ar- 
dent lovers begin to understand. 

I do not know that the attempt has ever 
been made before to collect and collate all the 
Scriptural allusions and quotations in his works, 
and to trace the golden threads which he has 
woven from that source into the woof of his 
poetry. The delight of “fresh woods and pas- 
326 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


tures new” — so rare in this over-explored age — 
has thus been mine. I have found more than 
four hundred direct references to the Bible in 
the poems of Tennyson; and have given a list 
of them in the appendix to this book. This 
may have some value for professed Tenny- 
sonians, and for them alone it is given. The 
general reader would find it rather dry pas- 
turage. But there is an aspect of the subject 
which has a wider interest. And in this essay 
I want to show how closely Tennyson has read 
the Bible, how well he understands it, how 
much he owes to it, and how clearly he stands 
out as, in the best sense, a defender of the faith. 

i 

On my table lies the first publication which 
bears the name of Alfred Tennyson; a thin 
pamphlet, in faded gray paper, containing the 
Prolusiones Academicce , recited at the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge in 1829. Among them is one 
with the title: Timbuctoo; A Poem which ob- 
tained the Chancellor’s Medal, etc., by A. Ten- 
nyson, of Trinity College. 

On the eleventh page, in a passage describing 
the spirit of poetry which fills the branches 
of the “great vine of Fable,” we find these 
lines: — 


327 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway 
The heart of man; and teach him to attain 
By shadowing forth the Unattainable ; 

And step by step to scale the mighty stair 
Whose landing place is wrapped about with clouds 
Of glory of Heaven . 

And at the bottom of the page stands this foot- 
note: Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven 
is perfect . 

This is the earliest Biblical allusion that we 
can identify in the writings of Tennyson. Even 
the most superficial glance will detect its beauty. 
There are few who have not felt the lofty at- 
traction of the teachings of Christ, in which 
the ideal of holiness shines so far above our 
reach, while we are continually called to climb 
towards it. Especially these very words about 
perfection, which He spoke in the Sermon on 
the Mount, have often lifted us upward just 
because they point our aspirations to a goal 
so high that it seems inaccessible. The young 
poet who sets a jewel like this in his early work 
shows not only that he has understood the moral 
sublimity of the doctrine of Christ, but also 
that he has rightly conceived the mission of 
noble poetry, — to idealise human life. Once 
and again in his later writings we see the same 
picture of the soul rising step by step 
To higher things; 

328 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

and catch a glimpse of those vast altar-stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God . 

In the poem entitled “Isabel” — one of the 
best in the slender volume of 1830 — there is a 
line which reminds us that Tennyson must 
have known his New Testament in the original 
language. He says that all the fairest forms 
of nature are types of the noble woman whom 
he is describing, — 

And thou of God in thy great charity . 

No one who was not familiar with the Greek 
of St. Paul and St. John would have been bold 
enough to speak of the “charity of God.” It 
is a phrase which throws a golden light upon 
the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to 
the Corinthians , and brings the human love 
into harmony and union with the divine. 

“The May Queen” is a poem which has sung 
itself into the hearts of people everywhere. 
The tenderness of its sentiment and the cadence 
of its music have made it beloved in spite of 
its many faults. Yet I suppose that the ma- 
jority of readers have read it again and again, 
without recognising that one of its most melo- 
dious verses is a direct quotation from the third 
chapter of Job . 

And the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest . 

329 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


This is one of the instances — by no means rare 
— in which the translators of our English Bible 
have fallen unconsciously into the rhythm of 
perfect poetry; and it is perhaps the best illus- 
tration of Tennyson’s felicitous use of the very 
words of Scripture. 

There are others, hardly less perfect, in the 
fine sermon which the Rector in “ Aylmer’s 
Field” delivers after the death of Edith and 
Leolin. It is a mosaic of Bible language, most 
curiously wrought, and fused into one living 
whole by the passion of an intense sorrow. 
How like a heavy, dull refrain of prophetic grief 
and indignation recurs the dreadful text. 

Your house is left unto you desolate! 

The solemn association of the words lends the 
force of a superhuman and impersonal wrath 
to the preacher’s language, and the passage 
stands as a monumental denunciation of 

The social wants that sin against the strength of youth. 

Enoch Arden’s parting words to his wife 
contain some beautiful fragments of Scripture 
embedded in the verse. 

Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds. 

Is He not yonder in the uttermost 

Parts of the morning ? If I flee to these 

330 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

Can I go from Him ? and the sea is His , 

The sea is His: He made it. 

The Idylls of the King are full of allusions 
to the Bible. Take for instance the lines from 
“The Holy Grail”:— 

When the Lord of all things made Himself 
Naked of glory for His mortal change. 

Here is a commentary, most illuminative, on 
the fifth and sixth verses of the second chapter 
of Philippians. Again, in the same Idyll, where 
the hermit says to Sir Percivale, after his un- 
successful quest, — 

Thou hast not lost thyself to find thyself , 

we are reminded of the words of Christ and 
the secret of all victory in spiritual things: He 
that loseth his life shall find it. 

In “The Coming of Arthur,” while the 
trumpet blows and the city seems on fire with 
sunlight dazzling on cloth of gold, the long pro- 
cession of knights pass before the King, singing 
their great song of allegiance. It is full of war- 
rior’s pride and delight of battle, clanging battle- 
axe and flashing brand, — a true song for the 
heavy fighters of the days of chivalry. But it 
has also a higher touch, a strain of spiritual 
grandeur, which, although it may have no justi- 
331 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON. 

fication in an historical picture of the Round 
Table, yet serves to lift these knights of the 
poet’s imagination into an ideal realm and set 
them marching as ghostly heroes of faith and 
loyalty through all ages. 

The King will follow Christ , and we the King. 

Compare this line with the words of St. Paul: 
Be ye followers of me even as 1 also am of Christ . 
They teach us that the lasting devotion of men 
is rendered not to the human, but to the divine, 
in their heroes. He who would lead others 
must first learn to follow One who is higher 
than himself. Without faith it is not only im- 
possible to please God, but also impossible to 
rule men. King Arthur is the ideal of one who 
has heard a secret word of promise and seen a 
vision of more than earthly glory, by virtue 
of which he becomes the leader and master of 
his knights, able to inspire their hopes and unite 
their aspirations and bind their service to him- 
self in the fellowship of the Round Table. 

And now turn to one of the later poems of 
Tennyson: “Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After.” 
Sad enough in its lament for broken dreams, 
dark with the gloom of declining years, when 
the grasshopper has become a burden and de- 
sire has failed and the weary heart has grown 
332 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

afraid of that which is high; but at the close 
the old man rises again to the sacred strain: — 

Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway , yours or 
mine , 

Forward, till you see the highest Human Nature is divine . 

Follow Light and do the Right— for man can half control 
his doom — 

Till you see the deathless angel seated in the vacant tomb . 


II 

When we come to speak of the Biblical scenes 
and characters to which Tennyson refers, we 
find so many that the difficulty is to choose. 
He has recognised the fact that an allusion 
wins half its power from its connection with 
the reader’s memory and previous thought. 
In order to be forcible and effective it must be 
at least so familiar as to awaken a train of as- 
sociations. An allusion to something which is 
entirely strange and unknown may make an 
author appear more learned, but it does not 
make him seem more delightful. Curiosity may 
be a good atmosphere for the man of science to 
speak in, but the poet requires a sympathetic 
medium. He should endeavour to touch the 
first notes of well-known airs, and then memory 
will supply the accompaniment to enrich his 
333 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


music. This is what Tennyson has done with 
the instinct of genius in his references to the 
stories and personages of the Bible. 

His favourite allusion is to Eden and the 
mystical story of Adam and Eve. This oc- 
curs again and again, in “The Day-Dream,” 
Maud , In Memoriam , “The Gardener’s Daugh- 
ter,” The Princess , “Milton,” “Enid,” and 
“Lady Clara Vere de Vere.” The last instance 
is perhaps the most interesting, on account of a 
double change which has been made in the form 
of the allusion. In the edition of 1842 (the 
first in which the poem appeared) the self- 
assertive peasant who refuses to fall in love 
with the lady of high degree, says to her, — 

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, 

From yon blue heavens above us bent, 

The gardener Adam and his wife 
Smile at the claims of long descent. 

In later editions this was altered to “the grand 
old gardener and his wife.” But in this form 
the reference was open to misunderstanding. 
I remember a pretty young woman, who once 
told me she had always thought the lines re- 
ferred to some particularly pious old man who 
had formerly taken care of Lady Clara’s flower- 
beds, and who now smiled from heaven at the 
334 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


foolish pride of his mistress. Perhaps it is just 
as well that Tennyson restored the line, in 1875, 
to its original form, and gave us “the gardener 
Adam” again, to remind us of the quaint 
distich — 

“ When Adam delved and Eve span , 

Who was then the gentleman ?" 

The story of Jephtha’s daughter is another 
of the Old Testament narratives for which the 
poet seems to have a predilection. It is told 
with great beauty and freedom in the “Dream 
of Fair Women”; “Aylmer’s Field” touches 
upon it; and it recurs in “The Flight.” 

In The Princess we find allusions to the 
Queen of Sheba, Vashti, Miriam, Jael, Lot’s 
wife, Jonah’s gourd, and the Tower of Babel. 
And if your copy of the Bible has the Apocrypha 
in it, you may add the story of Judith and Holo- 
fernes. 

Esther appears in “Enid,” and Rahab in 
Queen Mary . In “Godiva” we read of the 
Earl’s heart, — 

As rough as Esau's hand ; 

and in “Locksley Hall” we see the picture of 
the earth standing 

At gaze , like Joshua's moon in Ajalon . 

385 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

The “Sonnet to Buonaparte” recalls to our 
memory 

Those whom Gideon school'd with briers. 

In “The Palace of Art” we behold the hand- 
writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s Feast. 

It would be impossible even to enumerate 
Tennyson’s allusions to the life of Christ, from 
the visit of the Magi, which is referred to in 
“Morte d’Arthur” and “The Holy Grail,” 
down to the line in “Balin and Balan” which 
tells of 

That same spear 

Wherewith the Roman pierced the side of Christ. 

But to my mind the most beautiful of all 
the references to the New Testament is the 
passage in In Memoriam which describes the 
reunion of Mary and Lazarus after his return 
from the grave. With what a human in- 
terest does the poet clothe the familiar story ! 
How reverently and yet with what natural 
and simple pathos does he touch upon the more 
intimate relations of the three persons who 
are the chief actors! The question which has 
come a thousand times to every one that has 
lost a dear friend, — the question whether love 
survives in the other world, whether those who 
336 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

have gone before miss those who are left be- 
hind and have any knowledge of their grief, — 
this is the suggestion which brings the story 
home to us and makes it seem real and living. 

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave. 

And home to Mary’s house return’d 
Was this demanded , — if he yearn’d 
To hear her weeping by his grave? 

Where wert thou , brother , those four days?” 
There lives no record of reply. 

Which telling what it is to die. 

Had surely added praise to praise . 

From every house the neighbours met. 

The streets were fill’d with joyful sound, 

A solemn gladness even crown’d 
The purple brows of Olivet. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ l 
The rest remaineth unreveal’d; 

He told it not; or something seal’d 
The lips of that Evangelist. 

Then follows the description of Mary, — a 
passage which seems to me to prove the su- 
periority of poetry, as an art, over painting 
and sculpture. For surely neither marble nor 
canvas ever held such a beautiful figure of de- 
votion as that which breathes in these verses: — 

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. 

No other thought her mind admits 

337 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


But , he was dead , and there he sits , 

He that brought him back is there . 

Then one deep love doth supersede 
All other , wforc her ardent gaze 
Roves from the living brother's face 
And rests upon the Life indeed. 

All subtle thought , all curious fears y 
Borne down by gladness so complete , 

She bows , she bathes the Saviour's feet 
With costly spikenard and with tears. 

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers , 
Whose loves in higher love endure; 

What souls possess themselves so pure> 

Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 

It does not seem possible that the changing 
fashions of poetic art should ever make verses 
like these seem less perfect, or that Time should 
ever outwear the sweet and simple power of 
this conception of religion. 

There is no passage in literature which ex- 
presses better the mystery of death, or shows 
more attractively the happiness of an unques- 
tioning personal faith in Him who has solved 
it and knows the answer. 

The poem of “Rizpah,” which was first pub- 
lished in the volume of Ballads in 1880, is an 
illustration of dramatic paraphrase from the 
Bible. The story of the Hebrew mother watch- 
388 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


ing beside the dead bodies of her sons whom 
the Gibeonites had hanged upon the hill, and 
defending them night and day for six months 
from the wild beasts and birds of prey, is trans- 
formed into the story of an English mother, 
whose son has been executed for robbery and 
hung in chains upon the gibbet. She is driven 
wild by her grief; hears her boy’s voice wailing 
through the wind, “O mother, come out to 
me”; creeps through the rain and the darkness 
to the place where the chains are creaking and 
groaning with their burden; gropes and gathers 
all that is left of what was once her child and 
carries him home to bury him beside the church- 
yard wall. And then, when she is accused of 
theft, she breaks out in a passion of defence. 
It is a mother’s love justifying itself against a 
cruel law. Those poor fragments which the 
wind and the rain had spared were hers, by a 
right divine, — bone of her bone, — she had nursed 
and cradled her baby, and all that was left be- 
longed to her; justice had no claim which could 
stand against hers. 

Theirs ? 0 no! they are mine , — not theirs , — they had moved 
in my side! 

Swinburne said of this passage, “Nothing 
more piteous, more passionate, more adorable 
339 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


for intensity of beauty was ever before this 
wrought by human cunning into the likeness 
of such words as words are powerless to praise.” 

in 

In trying to estimate the general influence of 
the Bible upon the thought and feeling of Ten- 
nyson we have a more difficult task. For the 
teachings of Christianity have become a part 
of the moral atmosphere of the age; and it is 
hard for us to tell just what any man would 
have been without them, or just how far they 
have made him what he is, while we are looking 
at him through the very same medium in which 
we ourselves are breathing. If we could get 
out of ourselves, if we could divest ourselves 
of all those views of God and duty and human 
life which we have learned so early that they 
seem to us natural and inevitable, we might 
perhaps be able to arrive at a more exact dis- 
crimination. But this would be to sacrifice a 
position of vital sympathy for one of critical 
judgment’. The loss would be greater than the 
gain. It is just as well for the critic to recognise 
that he is hardly able 

To sit as God , holding no form of creed , 

But contemplating all. 

340 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

Tennyson himself has described the mental 
paralysis, the spiritual distress, which follow 
that attempt. A critic ought to be free from 
prejudices, but surely not even for the sake of 
liberty should he make himself naked of con- 
victions. To float on wings above the earth 
will give one a bird’s-eye view; but for a man’s- 
eye view we must have a standing-place on the 
earth. And after all the latter may be quite as 
true, even though it is not absolutely colourless. 

The effect of Christianity upon the poetry 
of Tennyson may be felt, first of all, in its gen- 
eral moral quality. By this it is not meant that 
he is always or often preaching, or drawing 
pictures 

4 4 To point a moral or adorn a tale ” 

Didactic art sometimes misses its own end by 
being too instructive. We find in Tennyson’s 
poems many narratives of action and descrip- 
tions of character which are simply left to speak 
for themselves and teach their own lessons. In 
this they are like the histories in the Booh of 
Judges or the Books of the Kings . The writer 
takes it for granted that the reader has a heart 
and a conscience. Compare in this respect, 
the perfect simplicity of the domestic idyl of 
“Dora” with the Book of Ruth . 

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But at the same time the poet can hardly 
help revealing, more by tone and accent than 
by definite words, his moral sympathies. Tenny- 
son always speaks from the side of virtue; and 
not of that new and strange virtue which some 
of our later poets have exalted, and which when 
it is stripped of its fine garments turns out to 
be nothing else than the unrestrained indulgence 
of every natural impulse; but rather of that 
old-fashipned virtue whose laws are “ Self -rever- 
ence, self-knowledge, self-control,” and which 
finds its highest embodiment in the morality 
of the New Testament. Read, for example, his 
poems which deal directly with the subject of 
marriage: “The Miller’s Daughter,” “Isobel,” 
“Lady Clare,” “The Lord of Burleigh,” “Locks- 
ley Hall,” “Love and Duty,” “The Wreck,” 
“Aylmer’s Field,” “Enoch Arden,” the latter 
part of The Princess , and many different pas- 
sages of the Idylls . From whatever side he 
approaches the subject, whether he is painting 
with delicate, felicitous touches the happiness of 
truly-wedded hearts, or denouncing the sins of 
avarice and pride which corrupt the modern 
marriage-mart of society, or tracing the secret 
evil which poisoned the court of Arthur and 
shamed the golden head of Guinevere, his ideal 
is always the perfect union of two lives in one. 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

“ which is commended of St. Paul to be honour- 
able among all men.” To him woman seems 
loveliest when she has 

The laws of marriage character’d in gold 
TJpon the blanched tablets of her hearty 

and man strongest when he has learned 

To love one maiden only , cleave to her. 

And worship her by years of noble deeds. 

The theology of Tennyson has been accused 
of a pantheistic tendency; and it cannot be 
denied that there are expressions in his poems 
which seem to look in that direction, or at least 
to look decidedly away from the conception of 
the universe as a vast machine and its Maker 
as a supernatural machinist who has constructed 
the big engine and left it to run on by itself 
until it wears out. But surely this latter view, 
which fairly puts God out of the world, is not 
the view of the Bible. The New Testament 
teaches us, undoubtedly, to distinguish between 
Him and His works; but it also teaches that 
He is in His works, or rather that all His works 
are in Him , — in Him , says St. Paul, we live 
and move and have our being. Light is His gar- 
ment. Life is His breath. 

God is law , say the wise; 0 Soul , and let us rejoice , 

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. 

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STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

But if I wished to prove, against those who 
doubted, Tennyson’s belief in a living, personal, 
spiritual God, immanent in the universe, yet 
not confused with it, I should turn to his doctrine 
of prayer. There are many places in his poems 
where prayer is, not explained, but simply justi- 
fied, as the highest activity of a human soul 
and a real bond between God and man. In 
these very lines on “The Higher Pantheism,” 
from which I have just quoted, there is a verse 
which can only be interpreted as the description 
of a personal intercourse between the divine 
and the human: — 

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit 
can meet , — 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. 
Of Enoch Arden in the dreadful loneliness of 
that rich island where he was cast away it is 
said that 

Had not his poor heart 
Spoken with That, which being everywhere 
Lets none , who speaks with Him, seem all alone 
Surely the man had died of solitude. 

When he comes back, after the weary years of 
absence, to find his wife wedded to another, 
and his home no longer his, it is by prayer that 
he obtains strength to keep his generous resolve 
Not to tell her , never to let her know , 

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THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

and to bear the burden of his secret to the lonely 
end. Edith, in the drama of Harold , when her 
last hope breaks and the shadow of gloom be- 
gins to darken over her, cries, — 

No help hut prayer , 

A breath that fleets beyond this iron world 
And touches Him that made it. 

King Arthur, bidding farewell to the last of his 
faithful knights, says to him, — 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain , 

//, knowing God , they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 

For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 

But lest any one should say that these passages 
are merely dramatic, and do not express the 
personal faith of the poet, turn to the solemn 
invocation in which he has struck the keynote 
of his deepest and most personal poem, — 

Strong Son of God , immortal Love! 

It is the poet’s own prayer. No man could 
have written it save one who believed that 
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God is Love, and that Love is incarnate in the 
person of Jesus Christ. 

Next to the question of the reality of God, 
comes the problem of human life and destiny. 
And this has a twofold aspect. First, in regard 
to the present world, is man moving upward 
or downward; is good stronger than evil or 
evil stronger than good; is life worth living, 
or is it a cheat and a failure ? Second, in regard 
to the future, is there any hope of personal 
continuance beyond death? To both of these 
inquiries Tennyson gives an answer which is 
in harmony with the teachings of the Bible. 

He finds the same difficulties and doubts in 
the continual conflict between good and evil 
which are expressed in Job and Ecclesiastes . 
Indeed so high an authority as Professor Plump- 
tre has said that “the most suggestive of all 
commentaries” on the latter book are Tenny- 
son’s poems, “The Vision of Sin,” “The Palace 
of Art,” and “Two Voices.” In the last of these 
he draws out in the form of a dialogue the strife 
between hope and despair in the breast of a 
man who has grown weary of life and yet is 
not ready to embrace death. For, after all, 
the sum of the reasons which the first voice 
urges in favour of suicide is that nothing is 
worth very much, no man is of any real value 
346 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


to the world, il rty a pas d’homme necessaire , 
no effort produces any lasting result, all things 
are moving round and round in a tedious circle, 
— vanity of vanities, — if you are tired why 
not take your hat and leave the play? The 
tempted man — tempted to yield to the devil’s 
own philosophy of pessimism — uses all argu- 
ment to combat the enemy, but in vain, or at 
least with only half -success; until at last the 
night is worn away; he flings open his window 
and looks out upon the Sabbath morn. 

The sweet church hells began to peal. 

On to God's house the people prest; 

Passing the place where each must rest , 

Each entered like a welcome guest. 

One walked between his wife and child , 

With measured footfall firm and mild , 

And now and then he gravely smiled . 

The prudent partner of his blood 
Leaned on him , faithful , gentle , good , 

Wearing the rose of womanhood. 

And in their double love secure , 

The little maiden walked demure , 

Pacing with downward eyelids pure. 

These three made unity so sweety 
My frozen heart began to beat , 

Remembering its ancient heat. 

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1 blest them , and they wandered on : 

I spoke , but answer came there none; 

The dvll and bitter voice was gone . 

And then comes another voice whispering of a 
secret hope, and bidding the soul “Rejoice ! 
Rejoice!” If we hear in the first part of the 
poem the echo of the saddest book of the Old 
Testament, we hear also in the last part the 
tones of Him who said: Let not your heart be 
troubled: in my Father's house are many man- 
sions; if it were not so , I would have told you . 

There are many places in the poems of Ten- 
nyson where he speaks with bitterness of the 
falsehood and evil that are in the world, the 
corruptions of society, the downward tendencies 
in human nature. But he is not a prophet of 
despair. He doubts not that 

Thro * the ages one increasing purpose runs , 

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 
the suns . 

He believes that good 

Shall be the final goal of iU. 

He rests his faith upon the uplifting power of 
Christianity : — 

For I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian 
child . 


S48 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 

He hears the bells at midnight tolling the death 
of the old year, and he calls them to 

Ring in the valiant man and free , 

The larger hearty the kindlier hand; 

Ring out the darkness of the land , 

Ring in the Christ that is to he! 

In regard to the life beyond the grave, he 
asserts with new force and beauty the old faith 
in a personal immortality. The dim conception 
of an unconscious survival through the influence 
of our thoughts and deeds, which George Eliot 
has expressed in her poem of “the choir in- 
visible, ” Tennyson finds to be 

A faith as vague as all unsweet. 

Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside; 

And I shall know him when we meet. 

The Christian doctrine of a personal recognition 
of friends in the other world has never been 
more distinctly uttered than in these words. 
It is not, indeed, supported by any metaphysical 
arguments; nor are we concerned thus to justify 
it. Our only purpose now is to show — and 
after these verses who can doubt it — that the 
poet has kept the faith which he learned in 
his father’s house and at his mother’s knee. 

So in regard to the future state of those who 
349 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


have passed through the gate of death: Tenny- 
son may not have accepted all the particular 
definitions and details of rewards and punish- 
ments that are given by the churches, but there 
is not a line in all his works that is contrary 
to the teachings of Christ, nor a line that runs 
beyond the limit of human thought into the 
mysteries of the unknown and the unknowable. 
“The wages of sin is death; the gift of God is 
eternal life.” This is the truth which he teaches 
on higher authority than his own. “The rest,” 
as Hamlet says, “is silence.” 

But what is the end of all these conflicts, 
these struggles, these probations? What the 
final result of this strife between sin and vir- 
tue ? What the consummation of oppugnancies 
and interworkings? The poet looks onward 
through the mists and shadows and sees only 
God:— 

That God , which ever lives and loves , 

One God , one law , one element , 

And one far-off divine event , 

To which the whole creation moves . 

And if any one shall ask what this far-off divine 
event is, we may answer in the words of St. 
Paul: — 

For he must reign until he hath put all enemies 
under his feet . The last enemy that shall he abol - 
350 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


ished is death. For , he put all things in sub- 
jection under his feet. But when he saith, all 
things are put in subjection , it is evident that he 
is excepted who did subject all things unto him. 
And when all things have been subjected unto 
him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected 
to him that did subject all things unto him , that 
God may be all in all. 

And now, as we bring to a close this brief 
study of a subject which I trust has proved 
larger than it promised at first to those who 
had never looked into it, what are our con- 
clusions? Or if this word seem too exact and 
formal, what are our impressions in regard to 
the relations between Tennyson and the Bible ? 

It seems to me that we cannot help seeing 
that the poet owes a large debt to the Bible, 
not only for its formative influence upon his 
mind and for the purely literary material in 
the way of illustrations and allusions which 
it has given him, but also, and more partic- 
ularly, for the creation of a moral atmosphere, 
a medium of thought and feeling, in which he 
can speak freely and with assurance of sym- 
pathy to a wide circle of readers. He does not 
need to be always explaining and defining. 
There is much that is taken for granted, much 
351 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

that goes without saying. What a world of 
unspoken convictions lies behind such poems 
as “Dora” and “Enoch Arden.” Their beauty 
is not in themselves alone, but in the air that 
breathes around them, in the light that falls 
upon them from the faith of the centuries. 
Christianity is something more than a system 
of doctrines; it is a tone, a spirit, a great current 
of memories, beliefs and hopes flowing through 
millions of hearts. And he who launches his 
words upon this current finds that they are 
carried with a strength beyond his own, and 
freighted often with a meaning which he him- 
self has not fully understood as it passed through 
him. 

But, on the other hand, we cannot help seeing 
that the Bible gains a wider influence and a 
new power over men as it flows through the 
poet’s mind upon the world. Its narratives 
and its teachings clothe themselves in modern 
forms of speech, and find entrance into many 
places which otherwise were closed against 
them. I do not mean by this that poetry is 
better than the Bible, but only that poetry 
lends wings to truth. People who would not 
read a sermon will read a poem. And though 
its moral and religious teachings may be in- 
direct, though they may proceed by silent as- 
352 


THE BIBLE IN TENNYSON 


sumption rather than by formal assertion, they 
exercise an influence which is perhaps the more 
powerful because it is unconscious. 

The Bible is in continual danger of being 
desiccated by an exhaustive (and exhausting) 
scientific treatment. When it comes to be re- 
garded chiefly as a compendium of exact state- 
ments of metaphysical doctrine, the day of its 
life will be over, and it will be ready for a place 
in the museum of antiquities. It must be a 
power in literature if it is to be a force in so- 
ciety. For literature, as a wise critic has sug- 
gested, is just “the best that has been thought 
and said in the world.” And if this be true, 
literature is certain, not only to inspire culture 
but also to mould conduct. 

Is it possible, then, for wise and earnest men 
to look with indifference upon the course of 
what is often called, with a slighting accent, 
“mere belles lettres 99 ? We might as well be 
careless about the air we breathe or the water 
we drink. Malaria is no less fatal than pesti- 
lence. The chief peril which threatens the 
permanence of Christian faith and morals is 
none other than the malaria of modem letters, 
— an atmosphere of dull and cold, or feverish 
and frivolous, materialism. Into this poisoned 
air the poetry of Tennyson comes like a pure 
353 


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wind from a loftier and serener height, bring- 
ing life and joy. His face looks out upon these 
darkening days, — grave, strong, purified by con- 
flict, lighted by the inward glow of faith. He 
is become as one of the prophets, — a witness 
for God and for immortality. 


354 


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TN the secluded garden of Christ’s College, at 
A Cambridge, there is a mulberry-tree of which 
tradition says that it was planted by John Mil- 
ton when he was a student there. I remember 
sitting on the green turf below it, a few years 
ago, and looking up at the branches, heavy 
with age and propped on crutches, and wonder- 
ing to see that the old tree still brought forth 
fruit. It was not the size nor the quality of 
the fruit that impressed me. I hardly thought 
of that. The strange thing, the beautiful thing, 
was that, after so many years, the tree was yet 
bearing. 

It is this feeling that comes to us when we 
see the productive power of a poet continued 
beyond the common term of human life. The 
thing is so rare that it appears almost miraculous. 
“Whom the gods love die young” seems to be 
the law for poets; or, at least, if they chance 
to live long, the gods, and chiefly Apollo, cease 
to love them. How few are the instances in 
which poetic fertility has lasted beyond the 
355 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


threescore years! Wordsworth, Landor, Vic- 
tor Hugo, Robert Browning, — among our Amer- 
ican singers, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, and 
Lowell, — truly they are not many to whom 
has been given the double portion of long life 
and unfailing song. English literature has no 
parallel, in this respect, to the career of Tenny- 
son. For sixty-six years he was drawing re- 
freshment from the wells of poetry, and still 
the silver cord was not loosed, nor the golden 
bowl broken. 

This chapter deals with the work of his later 
life. It has a value of its own, apart from the 
wonder of its production at such an advanced 
age. I am quite sure that there is a great deal 
which belongs to the enduring poetry of Tenny- 
son in the two volumes which he gave to the 
world in 1886 and 1889, and in the posthumous 
volume which appeared in the month of his 
death, October, 1892. 

I 

“Locksley Hall Sixty Years After” was not 
received at first with notable applause. The 
young critics reviled it as the work of an old 
man, and raised a chorus of “Go up, thou bald- 
head,” which made one regret that since the 
356 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


days of Elisha the bears have neglected one of 
their most beneficent functions. 

The first “Locksley Hall” was beyond a 
doubt the most immediately successful thing in 
the volumes of 1842, which gave Tennyson his 
place as a popular poet. The swift movement 
of the verse, the romantic interest of the story, 
the vigorous spirit of hope and enthusiasm which 
throbbed through the poem and made it seem 
alive with the breath of a new age, at once cap- 
tivated all readers. It was this poem, more 
than any other, which lifted Tennyson beyond 
the admiration of a narrow circle and opened 
to him the heart of the world. And it is worthy 
of notice that, even in its outward form, this 
poem is one of the few which his habit of self- 
correction left almost unchanged. There are 
but four slight verbal variations between the 
first and the last text. 

Forty-four years had passed when the poet 
took up the thread of his youthful dream once 
more and followed it to the end. 

The nature of the poem as a dramatic lyric 
must not be forgotten, for it is this which gives 
unity to the two parts. They are not discon- 
nected strings of brilliant metaphors, or trochaic 
remarks upon human life and progress. They 
are the expression of a character, the lyric his- 
357 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


tory of a person; they form a complete and 
rounded whole. They are two acts in the same 
play. The hero, the scene, remain the same. 
Only the time is changed by half a century. 

It seems that Tennyson was not willing to 
leave his hero as he stood in the first act. For 
with all his attractive, not to say “magnetic,” 
qualities, there was something about him that 
was unlovely, almost absurd. He made too 
much of himself, talked too loudly and reck- 
lessly, was too much inclined to rave and exag- 
gerate. Tennyson doubtless wished to do for 
him what time really does for every man whose 
heart is of true metal — make him wiser and 
kinder and more worthy to be loved. The 
touches by which this change has been accom- 
plished are admirable. 

Compare the rejected lover’s jealousy of the 
baby rival whose lips should laugh him down, 
and whose hands should push him from the 
mother’s heart, with the old man’s prayer be- 
side the marble image of Amy, 

Looking still as if she smiled , 

sleeping quietly with her little child upon her 
breast. Or turn from the young man’s scorn- 
ful and unjust description of the richer suitor 
who had carried off his sweetheart, to the gen- 
358 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


erous tribute which he lays at last upon the 
grave of him who 

Strove for sixty widow'd years to help his homelier brother 
man. 

Or put his first wild complaint of the worth- 
lessness and desolation of his life beside his 
later acknowledgment of the joy and strength 
which had come to him through the larger, 
deeper love of Edith. Surely, if words have 
any meaning, the poet means to show by these 
things that not only youthful jealousy, but also 
youthful despair, is false, and that, for every 
one who will receive its discipline and hold fast 
to its hopes, life is worth the living. 

So far, then, as the story of the two poems is 
concerned, so far as they present to us a pic- 
ture of human character and trace its develop- 
ment through the experience of joy and sorrow, 
their lesson is sweet and sound and full of 
encouragement. It shows the frailty of exag- 
gerated feelings of passion, born in an atmos- 
phere of tropical heat, and unable to endure 
the cooler air of reality. But it shows also that 
the garden of life has better and more lasting 
blossoms, affections which survive all shock and 
change, a man’s love which is stronger than a 
boy’s fancy, a man’s reverence for honest worth 
359 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


which can overcome a boy’s resentment for 
imagined wrongs, 

A sober certainty of waking bliss 

which makes divine amends for the vanished 
dreams of boyhood. It reminds us of the story 
of the “ child-wife,” Dora, and the woman- 
wife, Agnes, which Dickens has told in David 
Copperfield , or of Thackeray’s history of Henry 
Esmond. 

But when we come to consider the sequel 
of the poem in its other aspect, as a commen- 
tary on modern England, as an estimate of 
the result of those buoyant, bounding hopes 
which seemed to swing the earlier verses on- 
ward in the full tide of exultation toward a 
near millennium, we find a difference of opinion 
among critics. There were some who regarded 
the second “Locksley Hall” as a veritable pal- 
inode, a complete recantation of the poet’s 
youthful creed, a shameful desertion from the 
army of progress to the army of reaction, a 
betrayal of the standard of hope into the hands 
of despair. There were others, among them Mr. 
Gladstone, who thought that, though the poet 
had not really deserted the good cause, he had 
at least yielded too far to despondency, and 
that he was in danger of marring the semi-cen- 
360 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


tennial jubilee of Queen Victoria’s reign with 
unnecessarily “ tragic tones.” It seems to me 
that both of these views were unjust, because 
they both failed to go far enough beneath the 
surface. They left out of sight several things 
which were necessary to a fair judgment of 
the poem. 

First of all is the fact that the poet does not 
speak for himself, but through the lips of a 
persona , a mask; and what he says must be 
in character. Mr. Gladstone has, indeed, noted 
this fact; but he has failed to take fully into 
account the peculiar and distinctive qualities 
of the character which the poet has chosen. 
The hero of “Locksley Hall” is a man in whom 
emotion is stronger than thought; impulsive, 
high-strung, supersensitive; one to whom every- 
thing that he sees must loom larger than life 
through the mist of his own overwrought feel- 
ings. This is his nature. And if in youth he 
took too bright a view of the future, it is quite 
as inevitable that in age he should take too 
dark a view of the present. If there be any 
exaggeration in his complaints about the evils 
of our times, it is but fair to set them down to 
the idiosyncrasy of the hero, and not to the 
opinions of the poet. 

But suppose we put this plea of dramatic 
361 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


propriety aside, and make Tennyson answer- 
able for all that his hero says. We shall find 
that there were some things in the first rhapsody 
almost as hard and bitter as any in the second. 
Take the vigourous imprecations against the 
social wants, the social lies, the sickly forms, 
by which the young man is oppressed and in- 
furiated. Hear him cry: — 

What is that which I should turn to , lighting upon days 
like these? 

Every door is barred with gold , and opens but to golden keys. 
See his picture of the hungry people, creeping 
like a lion towards the slothful watcher beside 
a dying fire. Here, at least, even in the first 
outflow of hopeful music, are the warning notes. 
And though there may be more severity in the 
old man’s condemnation of the iniquities and 
follies of society, in one point at least he has 
grown milder: he does not indulge in any more 
“ cursing.” 

Observe also, if we must hold Tennyson re- 
sponsible for a retraction in the second poem 
of anything that he taught in the first, just 
what is the point to which that retraction ap- 
plies. He does not deny his early hope for the 
future of England and the world; he denies 
only the two insufficient grounds on which 
that hope was based. 


362 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


One of these grounds was the swift and won- 
derful march of what is called modern improve- 
ment, meaning thereby the steamship, the rail- 
way, the telegraph, and the advance of all the 
industrial arts. Of these he says now: — 

Half the marvels of my morning , triumphs over time and space , 
Staled by frequence , shrunk by usage into commonest 
commonplace. 

And is not this true? Have we not all felt 
the shrinkage of the much-vaunted miracles of 
science into the veriest kitchen utensils of a 
comfort-worshipping society? Physical powers 
have been multiplied by an unknown quan- 
tity, but it is a serious question whether moral 
powers have not had their square root extracted. 
A man can go from New York to London now 
in five days by ship, in two days by air-plane 
or dirigible, if he has good luck. But when 
he arrives he is no better man than if it had 
taken him a month. He can talk across three 
thousand miles of ocean, but he has nothing 
more to say than when he sent his letter by a 
sailing-packet. All the mechanical inventions 
in the world will not change man’s heart, or 
Lift him nearer God-like state. 

The other ground of hope in the old “Locks- 
ley Hall” was the advance of modern politics, 
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through the freedom of speech and the extension 
of suffrage, which seemed to promise at no dis- 
tant date a sort of universal “Parliament of 
Man,” a “Federation of the World.” In the 
new “Locksley Hall” the poet confesses that 
this ground also has failed him. He no longer 
thinks so highly of Parliament that he desires 
to see it reproduced on a larger scale. The 
virtues of talk as a panacea for human ills ap- 
pear to him dubious. He hazards the con- 
jecture that 

Old England may go down in babble at last. 

And he breaks out in fierce indignation against 
the “rivals of realm-ruining party,” who care 
more for votes than for truth, and for the 
preservation of their own power than for the 
preservation of the Empire. 

What is all this but the acknowledgment of 
the truth which most sober men are beginning 
to feel? Fifty years ago material science and 
political theory promised large things. The 
promise has been kept to the ear and broken 
to the hope. The world has gone forward — a 
little — but it has not arrived at a complete mil- 
lennium, nor even swept at once into a brighter 
day; far from it. The heavy clouds which 
gathered in the sky at the close of the Nine- 
364 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


teenth Century broke, in the Twentieth Cen- 
tury, into a horrible tempest of war which devas- 
tated Europe. The moral condition of human- 
ity in general, and of England in particular, is 
certainly not free from elements of degradation 
and threats of danger. 

Let me quote two sentences, from prose- 
writers, contemporaries of Tennyson, which 
will show that the Victorian Age of literature 
was by no means such a smug, self-complacent 
period as some recent critics would have us 
believe. 

“British industrial existence seems fast be- 
coming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pes- 
tilence, physical and moral; a living Golgotha 
of souls and bodies buried alive; such a Cur- 
tius’ gulf communicating with the nether deeps 
as the sun never saw till now.” That was what 
Thomas Carlyle thought. And, after the same 
fashion, Ruskin wrote: “Remember, for the 
last twenty years, England and all foreign na- 
tions, either tempting her or following her, 
have blasphemed the name of God deliberately 
and openly; and have done iniquity by proc- 
lamation, every man doing as much injustice 
to his brother as it is in his power to do.” 

These utterances, like the darker verses in 
Tennyson’s poem, were not meant to be taken 
365 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


as complete pictures of the time. They were 
only earnest and vigourous warnings against 
the easy-going, self-complacent optimism which 
talks as if the millennium had already dawned. 
To reply to them by an enumeration of the 
scientific discoveries which were made, and the 
political measures which were passed, would 
have been quite beside the point. The ques- 
tion which pressed on serious minds in the Nine- 
teenth Century, and which is most urgent in 
the Twentieth Century, remains the same: Is 
human life really higher , holier , happier? 

The answer, if it is thoughtful as well as hope- 
ful, must be, A little. But still the strife, the 
shame, the suffering, endure. 

City children soak and blacken sold and sense in city 
slime; 

There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied 
feet , 

Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the 
street. 

If we ask when and how these things shall 
cease, the reply comes, not from the fairy-tales 
of science nor from the blue-books of politics, 
but from the heart of Christian justice and 
charity and from the promise of Christian faith. 
And this is the reply which Tennyson has given, 
366 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 

in words as clear and musical as he has ever 
uttered : — 

Follow you the Star that lights a desert pathway , yours or 
mine , 

Forward , till you learn the highest Human Nature is 
divine. 

Follow Light , and do the Right — for man can half control 
his doom — 

Till you see the deathless Angel seated in the vacant 
Tomb. 

Forward , let the stormy moment fly and mingle with the 
Past. 

I that loathed , have come to love him. Love will conquer 
at the last. 

The last line recalls us once more to the per- 
sonal interest of the poem, which, after all, is 
the strongest. The hero of “Locksley Hall” is 
bidding us farewell. He has played his part 
through. The drama of life is ended. In the 
first act we saw the youth seeking to forget 
his private sorrow in the largest dreams of public 
good; turning from the lost embraces of his 
“ faithless Amy,” to lay his head upon the vast 
bosom of the age, and listen to the deep throb- 
bing of cosmic hopes. In the second act we 
see the old man seeking to forget his public 
disappointments in his private affections; turn- 
ing back from that hard and unrestful world- 
367 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 

bosom, where he has heard nothing better than 
the clank of machinery and the words of windy 
oratory, to find rest in the tender memories 
of Amy and Edith, and the man whom time 
had changed from his enemy into his friend; 
and looking forward to the future for the fulfil- 
ment of his hopes in an age not yet revealed. 

Who that understands anything of a young 
man’s, or an old man’s, heart can question the 
truth of these two pictures? And who will 
venture to say that the best philosophy of life 
does not lie somewhere between optimism and 
pessimism, in that steadfast and chastened 
meliorism to which Christianity makes its ap- 
peal and gives its promise ? 

ii 

The volume entitled Demeter , and Other 
Poems , which appeared at the close of the year 
1889, does not contain any one poem of equal 
interest to the second “Locksley Hall”; but it 
contains several of more perfect workmanship, 
and in its wide range of subject and style it 
shows some of the finest qualities of Tenny- 
son’s poetry. 

Take, first, his sympathetic interpretation of 
Nature. Wordsworth was the leader here; he 
368 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


was the first to bring Nature close to man, and 
utter in human language her most intimate 
meanings; but Tennyson has added something 
to the scope and beauty of this kind of poetry. 
He has caught more of the throbbing and pas- 
sionate and joyous voices of the world; he has 
not entered so deeply into the silence and 
solemnity of guardian mountains and sleeping 
lakes and broad, bare skies; but he has felt 
more keenly the thrills and flushes of Nature — - 
the strange, sudden, perplexed, triumphant im- 
pulses of that eager seeking and tremulous 
welcoming of love which flows like life-blood 
through all animate things. And so he is at 
his best with Nature when he comes to the 
springtime. The lines on “The Oak” are 
Wordsworthian in their simplicity; the last 
stanza is a model of austere expression: — 

All his leaves 
FalVn at length , 

Look , he stands , 

Trunk and hough , 

Naked strength . 

But in “The Throstle” we have something that 
none but Tennyson could have written. Im- 
mortal youth throbs and pulses in this old man’s 
song. The simple music of joy, so swift and 
free that its cadences break through and 
369 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


through one another and overflow the edges of 
the verse: — 

Summer is coming, summer is coming , 

I know it, I know it, I know it. 

Light again, leaf again, life again, love again, 

Yes, my wild little poet. 

That sings itself. 

The poem of “ Demeter, ” which gives its name 
to the volume, is valuable for several qualities. 
It is an example of that opulent, stately, and 
musical blank-verse in which Tennyson was a 
great master. It shows also his power of re- 
animating an old-world legend with the vivid 
feeling of present life. The ancient myth of 
the earth-goddess, whose daughter has been 
snatched away into the shadowy underworld, 
is quickened by the poet’s genius into an im- 
passioned utterance of the sharp contrast be- 
tween the spectral existence of Hades and the 
sweet, homely familiarities of the earth, the 
clinging of the heart to simple mortal life, and 
the preference of its joys and sorrows to all 
the “hard eternities” of passionless gods. But 
to my apprehension the best quality in this 
poem, and the most vital, is its revelation of 
the depth and power of the poet’s human sym- 
pathy. 

Somehow or other Demeter’s divinity is for- 
370 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


gotten and lost in her motherhood. Take that 
passage which begins: — 

Child , when thou wert gone 
I envied human wives and nested birds. 

It would be impossible to express more directly 
and vividly the dependence of the mother upon 
the babe who is dependent upon her, the yearn- 
ing of the maternal breast towards the child 
who has been taken from it. It is the same 
generous love which is set to music in the song 
in “ Romney’s Remorse”; but there the love is 
not robbed and disappointed, but satisfied in 
the outpouring of its riches: — 

Beat, little heart , I give you this and this. 

That is the fragrance, the melody, the mys- 
tery of the passion of motherhood — profound, 
simple, elemental. And when a poet can feel 
and interpret that for us, and at the same time 
express the rude and massive emotions of the 
stolid peasant in a poem like “Owd Roa,” and 
the troubled, sensitive penitence of a vain, 
weak artist in a poem like “ Romney’s Re- 
morse,” he proves that nothing human is foreign 
to him. 

Tennyson’s most distinctive trait — that by 
which he is best known to those who know him 
371 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


best — is the power of uttering a delicate, vague, 
yet potent emotion, one of those feelings which 
belong to the twilight of the heart, where the 
light of love and the shadow of regret are 
mingled, in a lyric which defines nothing and 
yet makes everything clear. To this class be- 
long such songs as “Tears, idle tears,’ 5 “Blow, 
bugle, blow,” and “Break, break, break.” And 
this volume gives us another lyric with the 
same mystical and musical charm, “Far — far — 
away.” This is a melody that haunts youth 
and age; the attraction of distance, the strange 
magic of the dim horizon, the enchantment of 
evening bells ringing beyond the bounds of 
sight; these are things so aerial and evanescent 
that they seem to elude words; but Tennyson 
has somehow caught them in his song. 

But there is something still nobler and greater 
in his poetry. There is a spiritual courage in 
his work, a force of faith which conquers doubt 
and darkness, a light of inward hope which 
burns dauntless under the shadow of death. 
Tennyson is the poet of faith; faith, as dis- 
tinguished from cold dogmatism and the ac- 
ceptance of traditional creeds; faith, which 
does not ignore doubt and mystery, but triumphs 
over them and faces the unknown with fearless 
heart. The poem entitled “Vastness” is an ex- 
372 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


pression of this faith. But there is even a finer 
quality, a loftier, because a serener, power in 
the poem with which the book closes. Nothing 
that Tennyson has ever written is more beau- 
tiful in body and soul than “ Crossing the Bar.” 

Sunset and evening star , 

And one clear call for me ! 

And may there be no moaning of the bar , 

When I put out to sea , 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep , 

Too full for sound and foam. 

When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home . 

Twilight and evening bell , 

And after that the dark! 

And may there be no sadness of farewell, 

When 1 embark; 

For tho 9 from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face. 

When I have crost the bar. 

That is high poetry — simple even to the verge 
of austerity, yet rich with all the suggestions 
of wide ocean and waning light and vesper bells; 
easy to understand and full of music, yet open- 
ing inward to a truth which has no words, and 
pointing onward to a vision which transcends 
all forms; it is a delight and a consolation, a 
373 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


song for mortal ears, and a prelude to the larger 
music of immortality. 

It was his wish that this lyric should always 
stand at the close of every future edition of 
his poems. 

hi 

The Death of (Enone , Akbar’s Dream , and 
Other Poems , came out immediately after Ten- 
nyson’s death. He was at work correcting the 
proofs, with the loving care which he gave to 
all the details of his art, when I was his guest 
at Aldworth in the last week of August, 1892. 

The volume, while it is in some respects the 
slightest of all that Tennyson published, con- 
taining no poem that can be ranked with his 
best, and making no real increment to his fame, 
is certainly an extraordinary piece of work for 
a man of eighty-three years, and does not fall 
far below the general level of his poetry. 

In “The Death of (Enone” he returns to one 
of the classical subjects which charmed him in 
his youth. In “St. Telemachus” he takes a 
familiar story from the ecclesiastical history of 
Theodoret — the story of that first deed of monk- 
ish chivalry by which the gladiatorial shows at 
Rome were broken up — and turns it into verse. 
In “Akbar’s Dream” he touches the character 
374 


FRUIT FROM AN OLD TREE 


of the famous Mogul emperor whose name was 
the symbol of religious tolerance and breadth 
of mind, and whose endeavour was to rule with 
fairness and an even hand over all the people 
of different creeds in his vast dominion. The 
subject is one which had strong attractions for 
Tennyson, and he has handled it with warm 
sympathy. The poem closes with a brief, splen- 
did hymn to the Sun: — 

i 

Once again thou flamest heavenward , once again we see thee 
rise. 

Every morning is thy birthday , gladdening human hearts 
and eyes. 

y Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly 
down before thee. 

Thee the God-like, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing 
skies. 

n 

Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime 
to clime. 

Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their wood- 
land rhyme. 

Warble bird, and open flower, and men below the 
dome of azure, 

Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures 
Time l 

But of still greater interest are a few short 
poems — “The Making of Man,” “Doubt and 
375 


STUDIES IN TENNYSON 


Prayer,” "Faith,” "The Silent Voices,” "God 
and the Universe” — in which the poet has 
given utterance once more to the deepest faith 
that was in him: — 

Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human 
state. 

Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone 
is great. 

Nor the myriad world , His shadow, nor the silent Opener 
of the Gate . 

Men were saying, at the close of the Nine- 
teenth Century, that faith and art had parted 
company; that faith was dead, and art must 
live for itself alone. But while they were say- 
ing these things in melancholy essays and trivial 
verses, which denied a spiritual immortality and 
had small prospect of a literary one, the two 
great poets of the age, Tennyson and Brown- 
ing, were setting their music to the keynote of 
an endless life, and prophesying with the harp, 
according as it is written: I believe , and there- 
fore sing . 


\ 


376 


APPENDIX 

i 


A LIST OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES AND 
ALLUSIONS FOUND IN THE WORKS 
OF TENNYSON 


*** The author wishes to thank the many correspondents, in Canada, 
in England, and in the United States, who have kindly sent him addi- 
tions to this list since it was first printed, in 1889. It might be enlarged 
almost indefinitely. On the other hand, perhaps it includes already 
some references in which the connection with Scripture is fanciful. The 
line is hard to draw. But at least the list may serve to show how deeply 
the poetry of Tennyson is saturated with the influence of the Book which 
is at once “a well of English undefiled ” and “a well of water springing 
up into everlasting life.” 


A LIST OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES AND 
ALLUSIONS FOUND IN THE WORKS 
OF TENNYSON 


Timbuctoo. “And teach him to attain 

By shadowing forth the Unattainable.” * Matt. 5 : 48. 

* Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. 

Supposed Confessions. “My sin was as a thorn 

Among the thorns that girt Thy brow.” Matt. 27 : 29. 

“In this extremest misery 
Of ignorance I should require 
A sign.” 1 Cor. 1 : 22. 

“That happy morn 
When angels spake to men aloud. 

And thou and peace to earth were born.” Luke 2 : 10. 
“Brothers in Christ.” Matt. 12 : 50; Col. 1 : 2. 

2 Cor. 5 : 20. 
Luke 15 : 4. 
1 Tim. 3 : 6. 


“To reconcile me with thy God.”- 
“Bring back this lamb into thy fold.” 

“Pride, the sin of Devils.” 

“These little motes and grains shall be 
Clothed on with immortality.” 

“As manna on my wilderness.” 

“That God would move 
And strike the hard, hard rock, and thence. 

Sweet in their utmost bitterness. 

Would issue tears of penitence.” Num. 20 

The Kraken. “Until the latter fire shall heat the deep.” 

Rev. 8 : 8; 2 Pet. 3 


1 Cor. 15 : 53. 
Ex. 16 : 15. 


ill. 


: 10. 


Isabel. “The laws of marriage charactered in gold 
Upon the blanched tablets of her heart.” 

Ps. 37 : 31; 2 Car. 3 : 3. 


‘And thou of God in thy great charity .’ 

379 


1 John 4 : 11. 


APPENDIX 


To- 


‘Like that strange angel which of old 
Until the breaking of the light 
Wrestled with wandering Israel.’* 


Gen. 32 : 24. 


The Deserted House. 

“A mansion incorruptible.’* 2 Cor. 5:1. 

# 

“The house was builded of the earth.” 1 Cor. 15 : 47. 
Adeline. “Sabeean spice.” Is. 45 : 11. 

To J. M. Kemble. “Arrows of lightnings.” Zech. 9 : 14. 

Buonaparte. “Late he learned humility 

Perforce, like those whom Gideon schooled with briers.” 

Judges 8 : 16. 

Early Sonnets — Poland. “Lord, how long.” Ps. 6 : 3. 

Sonnet X. “The deluge.” Gen. 7:11. 

Two Voices. “A still small voice.” 1 Kings 19 : 12. 

“Wonderfully made.” Ps. 139 : 14. 

“When first the world began 
Young Nature through five cycles ran 
And in the sixth she moulded man.” Gen. 1 : 26. 

“A little lower than angels.” Ps. 8 : 5. 

“Like Stephen.” Acts 7 : 55. 

“I toil beneath the curse.” Gen. 3 : 17-19. 

“Naked I go.” Eccl. 5 : 15. 

“Though one should smite him on the cheek.” Luke 6 : 29. 

“His sons grow up that bear his name. 

Some grow to honour, some to shame.” Job 14 : 26. 

“The place he knew forgetteth him.” Ps. 103 : 16. 
“ ‘Omega! Thou art Lord,’ they said.” Rev. 1 : 8. 
“He may not do the thing he would.” Gal. 5 : 17. 

“Rejoice! Rejoice!” Phil. 4:4. 

Will Waterproof (1842). 

“Like Hezekiah’s backward runs 
The shadow of my days.” Is. 38 : 8. 

“If old things, there are new.” Matt. 13 : 52. 

380 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Who shall say me nay?” 1 Kings 2 : 20. 

“All in all” 1 Cor. 15: 28. 

The Palace of Art. 

“I built myself a lordly pleasure-house. 

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell. 

I said, ‘O Soul, make merry and carouse, 

Dear Soul, for all is well.’ ” Luke 12 : 18, 19. 

“Howling in outer darkness.” Matt. 8 : 12. 

“Common clay taken from the common earth 
Moulded by God.” Gen. 2 : 7. 

“Angels rising and descending.” Gen.. 28 : 12. 

“And oft some brainless devil enters in 

And drives them to the deep.” Luke 8 : 33. 

“Like Herod when the shout was in his ears. 

Struck through with pangs of hell.” Acts 12 : 21-23. 

“God before whom ever lie bare 
The abysmal deeps of Personality.” Heb. 4 : 13. 

“Wrote ‘Mene, mene,’ and divided quite 

The kingdom of her thought.” Dan. 5 : 25. 

The Palace of Art (Edition of 1833: note, p. 73). 

“One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed. 

As when he stood on Carmel-steeps, 

With one arm stretched out bare, and mocked and said, 

‘Come cry aloud — he sleeps.’ 

“Tall, eager, lean, and strong, his cloak windbome 
Behind, his forehead heavenly-bright 
From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn. 

Lit as with inner light.” 1 Kings 18 : 27. 

“Robed David touching holy strings.” 2 Sam. 6 : 5. 

“Isaiah with fierce Ezekiel, 

Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea.” 

“As power and might 

Abode in Samson’s hair.” Judges 16 : 17. 

“Far off she seem’d to hear the dully sound 
Of human footsteps fall. 

As in strange lands a traveller walking slow. 

In doubt and great perplexity, 

S81 


APPENDIX 


A little before moonrise hears the low 
Moan of an unknown sea. 

And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound 
Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry 
Of great wild beasts.” 

Wisdom of Solomon, 17 : 19 et seq., Apocrypha. 

Lady Clara Verb de Vere. 

“The gardener Adam and his wife.” Gen. 2 : 15. 

The May Queen. Conclusion. 

“His will be done.” Matt. 6 : 10. 


“He taught me all the mercy, for he showed me all the sin. 

Now, tho’ my lamp was lighted late, there’s One will let me in.” 

Matt. 25 : 1. 


“And the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.” 

Job 3 : 17. 


The Talking Oak. 

“Thy leaf shall never fail.” Ps. 1 : 3. 


The Lotus Eaters. 

“The flower ripens in its place. 

Ripens and fades and falls, and hath no toil.” 


A Dream of Fair Women. 

“The end of Time.” 


Matt. 6 : 28. 
Rev. 10 : 6. 


“The daughter of the warrior Gileadite, 

A maiden pure; as when she went along 
From Mizpeh’s towered gate with welcome light. 

With timbrel and with song.” Judges 11 : 34. 

“A threefold cord.” Eccl. 4 : 12. 

“The everlasting hills.” Gen. 49 : 26. 


“Gross darkness.” Is. 60 : 2. 

“Moreover it is written that my race 
Hewed Ammon hip and thigh from Aroer 
On Arnon unto Minneth.” Judges 11 : 33. 


“Love can vanquish death.” Cant. 8 : 6. 

Morte d’ Arthur. 

“Chaff . . . much better burnt.” (In “The Epic.”) 

Luke 3 : 17. 


382 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Such times have not been since the light that led 
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.” Matt. 2 : 2, 3. 

“War shall be no more.” Is. 2 : 4. 

The Gardener’s Daughter. “Eden.” Gen. 2 : 8. 

“Like the covenant of a God, to hold 
From thence thro’ all the worlds.” Is. 55 : 3. 

Edwin Morris. “Built . . . upon a rock.” Matt. 7 : 24. 

“God made the woman for the man.” 

1 Cor. 11 : 9; Gen. 2 : 18. 

St. Simeon Stylites. 

“The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.” Rev. 7 : 9. 
“This home 

Of sin, my flesh.” 2 Cor. 5 : 6. 

“Cover all my sin.” Ps. 32 : 1; 85 : 2. 

“O mercy, mercy! Wash away my sin.” 


Ps. 51 : 1, 2. 

“They think that I am somewhat.” Gal. 2 : 6. 

“Can I work miracles and not be saved?” 1 Cor. 13 : 2. 

“Pontius and Iscariot.” Matt. 26 : 14. 


“A sinful man, conceived and born in sin.” Ps. 51 : 5. 

“Abaddon and Asmodeus.” 

Rev. 9:11; Tobit 3:8. 

“Mortify your flesh.” Col. 3 : 5. 

“Yield not me the praise, 

God only.” Ps. 115 : 1. 

“A man of God.” 2 Tim. 3 : 17. 


The Golden Year. 

“Cry like the daughters of the horse-leech, Give!” 

Prov. 30 : 15. 

Locksley Hall. “Joshua’s moon in Ajalon.” Josh. 10 : 12. 

“But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.” 

Matt. 11 : 11. 

“S umm er isles of Eden.” Gen. 2 : 8. 

Godiva. “A heart as rough as Esau’s hand.” Gen. 27 : 23. 

“An everlasting name.” Is. 56 : 5. 


383 


APPENDIX 


The Day Dream. L’Envoi. 

“For since the time when Adam first 
Embraced his Eve in happy hour. 

And every bird of Eden burst 

In carol, every bud to flower.” Gen. 2 : 23. 

St. Agnes’ Eve. “So shows my soul before the lamb.” 

Rev. 7:9; 5:8. 

“So in my earthly house I am 


To that I hope to be.” 

2 Cor. 5 : 1. 

“Draw me, thy bride, . . * 

In raiment white and clean.” 

Rev. 3 : 5. 

“The Heavenly bridegroom waits 

To make me pure of sin.” 

Is. 62 : 5. 

“The Sabbaths of Eternity, 

One Sabbath deep and wide.” 

Heb. 4 : 9. 

“The shining sea.” 

Rev. 15 : 2. 


The Vision op Sin. 

“Thou shalt not be saved by works.” Gal. 2 : 16. 


“God’s likeness.” 

Gen. 1 : 26. 

“Far too naked to be shamed.” 

Gen. 2 : 25. 

To . “The many-headed beast.” 

Rev. 13 : 1. 

Enoch Arden. “Cast all your cares on God.” 

“That anchor holds.” 

1 Pet. 5 : 7. 

Heb. 6 : 19. 

“The uttermost parts of the morning.” 

Ps. 139 : 9. 

“The sea is His: He made it.” 

Ps. 95 : 5. 

“Under the palm-tree.” 

“The Sun of Righteousness.” 

Judges 4 : 5. 

Mai. 4 : 2. 


“These be palms 

Whereof the happy people strowing cried, 

‘Hosanna in the highest.’ ” John 12 : 13. 

“Set in this Eden of all plenteousness.” Gen. 2 : 9. 

“The blast of doom.” 1 These. 4 : 16. 


Aylmer’s Field. “Dust are our frames.” 

Gen. 3 : 19. 

“Sons of men, daughters of God.” 

384 

Gen. 6 : 2. 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Pale as the Jephtha’s daughter.” Judges 11 : 34. 
“Stumbling blocks.” 1 Cm. 1 : 23. 

“Almost all that is, hurting the hurt. 

Save Christ as we believe him.” Matt. 12 : 20. 


“Behold 

Your house is left unto you desolate.” Luke 13 : 35. 

“Never since our bad earth became one sea.” Gen. 7. 
“Gash thyself, priest, and honour thy brute Baal.” 

1 Kings 18 : 28. 

“The babe shall lead the lion.” Is. 11 : 6. 

“The wilderness shall blossom as the rose.” Is. 35 : 1. 
“Fares richly in fine linen.” Luke 16 : 19. 

“Leave all and follow me.” Luke 18 : 22. 

“His light about thy feet.” Ps. 119 : 105. 

“Carpenter’s son.” Matt. 13:55. 

“Wonderful, Prince of Peace, the Mighty God.” Is. 9 : 6. 

“As not passing thro’ the fire 
Bodies, but souls — thy children’s — thro’ the smoke.” 

Lev. 18 : 21. 


“The more base idolater.” 
“Rachel by the palmy well.” 
“Ruth amid the fields of com.” 
“Fair as the angel that said ‘Hail.’ ” 


Col. 3 : 5. 
Gen. 29 : 10. 

Ruth 2. 
Luke 1 : 28. 


“She walked. 

Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of love 
Who stilled the rolling wave of Galilee.” 

Matt. 8 : 26; 11 : 30. 

“O thou that killest, hadst thou known, 

O thou that stonest, hadst thou understood 
The things belonging to thy peace and ours.” 

Luke 13 : 34; 19 : 32. 

“Is there no prophet but the voice that calls 
Doom upon kings, or in the waste ‘Repent’?” 

Mark 1 : 3, 4. 


385 


APPENDIX 


“Is not our own child on the narrow way. 

Who down to those that saunter in the broad 

Cries ‘Come up hither,’ as a prophet to us?” Matt. 7 : 13. 

“Poor in spirit.” Matt. 5 : 3. 

“A rushing tempest of the wrath of God.” Ps. 11 :6. 

“Sent like the twelve-divided concubine 
To inflame the tribes.” Judges 19 : 29. 

“Pharaoh’s darkness.” Ex. 10 : 21. 

“Folds as dense as those 
Which hid the Holiest from the people’s eyes.” 

Matt. 27 : 45. 

“Their own gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.” 

Gen. 42 : 38. 

“Knew not what they did.” Luke 23 : 34. 

“Will not another take their heritage?” Acts 1 : 20. 
“Or one stone 

Left on another.” Matt. 24 : 2; Mark 13 : 2. 

“Is it a light thing?” Is. 7 : 13. 

“Those that swore 

Not by the Temple, but by the gold.” Matt. 23 : 16. 
“And made 

Their own traditions God, and slew the Lord.” 

Matt. 15 : 3; Acts 5 : 30. 

Sea Dreams. “Simple Christ.” 1 Cor. 2 : 2; 2 Cor. 11 : 3. 

“The scarlet woman.” Rev. 17 : 3-5. 

“The Apocalyptic millstone.” Rev. 18 : 21. 

“That great Angel: ‘Thus with violence 
Shall Babylon be cast into the sea. 

Then comes the close.’ ” Rev. 18 : 21. 

“Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Eph. 4 : 26. 

“Dear Lord, who died for all.” 2 Cor. 5 : 15. 

“When the great Books (see Daniel seven and ten) 

Were opened.” Dan. 7 : 10. 

Gal. 2 : 20. 


“We live by faith.” 

386 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 

‘All things work together for the good 


Of those.” 

Rom. 8 : 28. 

“Never took that useful name in vain.” 

Ex. 20 : 7. 

“The Cross . . . 

And Christ.” 

John 19 : 17. 

“ Boanerges.” 

Mark 3 : 17. 

Princess. “A fountain sealed.” 

Cant. 4 : 12. 

“A land of promise.” 

Eeb. 11 : 9. 

“A wolf within the fold.” 

Acts 20 : 29. 

“All those hard things 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.” 

1 Kings 10 : 1. 

“He, the wisest man.” 

1 Kings 4 : 31. 

“Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 

Of Lebanonian cedar.” 1 Kings 10 : 4, 5. 

“0 Vashti, noble Vashti! Summon’d out, 

She kept her state and left the drunken king 

To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms.” Esther 1. 

“Let there be light and there was light.” 

Gen. 1 : 3. 

“But we that are not all 

As parts, can see but parts.” 

1 Cor. 13 : 12. 

“Their cancell’d Babels.” 

“A new-world Babel, woman-built 
And worse-confounded.” 

Gen. 11 : 9. 

“They mind us of the time 
When we made bricks in Egypt.” 

Ex. 1 : 14. 

(Judith and Holofemes) Apoc., 

Book of Judith. 

“A Jonah’s gourd 

Up in one night and due to sudden sun.’ 

’ Jonah 4 : 6. 

“Touch not a hair of his head.” 

Luke 21 : 18. 

“The old leaven leaven’d all.” 

1 Cor. 5 : 6, 7. 

“This Egypt plague.” 

Ex. 7-12. 

“The fires of Hell.” 

Matt. 5 : 22. 

“Between a cymball’d Miriam and a Jael. : 

Ex. 15 

> 9 

: 20; Judges 4. 


387 


APPENDIX 


“Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.” 
“Stiff as Lot’s wife.” 

“Bond or free.” 

“Into the Heaven of Heavens.” 

The Grandmother. “The tongue is a fire.” 

“God, not man, is the judge of us all.” 
To the Rev. F. D. Maurice. “Anathema.” 

The Flower. “He that runs may read.” 

The Islet. “To a sweet little Eden on earth.” 


Judges 5 : 1. 
Gen. 19 : 26. 
1 Cor. 12 : 13. 
Neh. 9 : 6. 
James 3 : 6. 
Rom. 14 : 4. 
1 Cor. 16 : 22. 
Hab. 2 : 2. 
Gen. 2 : 8. 


The Spiteful Letter. 

“This faded leaf, our names are as brief.” Is. 1 : 30. 

Literary Squabbles. 

“When one small touch of charity 

Could lift them nearer God-like state 
Than if the crowded Orb should cry 

Like those who cried Diana great.” Ads 19 : 34. 
Northern Farmer. 

“I weant saay men be loiars thaw summun said it in ’aaste.” 

Ps. 116 : 11. 

Ode on the Duke of Wellington. 

“The shining table lands 

To which our God Himself is moon and sun.” Rev. 21 : 23. 

“Dust to dust.” Gen. 3:9; Eccl. 3 : 20. 
Wages. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 6 : 23. 

The Higher Pantheism. 

“The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — 
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?” 

Rom. 1 : 20. 

“Is not the vision He? tho’ He be not that which He seems? 
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams ? 

“Speak to Him for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.” 

Ps. 65 : 2; Rom. 8 : 16; Ads 17 : 27. 

“God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice. 

For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice.” 

Ps. 77 : 18. 


388 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


‘‘Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool; 

For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool.” 

Ps. 14 : 1. 

“And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; 
But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not He?” 

Is. 64 : 4; 1 Cor. 2 : 9 {Rev. Version). 


Boadicea. “Thou shalt wax and he shall dwindle.” John 3 : 30. 
Milton. /‘Angel . . . Gabriel.” Luke 2 : 1-19. 

“The brooks of Eden.” Gen. 2 : 10. 

In Memoriam. Proem. 

“Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face. 

By faith and faith alone embrace. 

Believing where we cannot prove.” 1 Pet. 1 : 8. 

“Thou madest life in man and brute.” John 1 : 3. 


“For knowledge is of things we see.” Rom. 8 : 24. 

“For merit lives from man to man, 

And not from man, O Lord, to thee.” Ps. 143 : 2. 


xv 

“And but for fancies which aver 
That all thy motions gently pass 
Athwart a plane of molten glass.” 

Job 37 : 18; Rev. 4 : 6. 

XXII 

“The shadow fear’d of man.” Ps. 23 : 4. 

xxiv 

“Since Adam left his garden.” Gen. 3 : 23. 

xxvm 

“Peace and goodwill to all mankind.” Luke 2 : 14. 


XXX 

‘They rest,’ we said; ‘their sleep is sweet.’ ” 

1 Thess. 4 : 14. 

XXXI 

“When Lazarus left his charnel-cave. 

And home to Mary’s house returned. 

Was this demanded — if he yearned 
To hear her weeping by his grave?” 

389 


John 11. 


APPENDIX 


XXXII 

“She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet 
With costly spikenard and with tears.” John 12 : 3. 

“The life indeed.” John 11 : 25. 

XXXVI 

“And so the Word had breath.” John 1 : 14. 

XXXVII 

“Sacred wine.” 1 Cor. 10 : 16. 

LVI 

“Who trusted God was love indeed.” 1 John 4 : 8. 


LX xx IV 

“What reed was that on which I leant?” Is. 36 : 6. 


LXXXVII 

“The God within him light his face.” 2 Cor. 6 : 16. 


LXXXVIII 

“Rings Eden.” Gen. 2 : 8. 

xcv 

“Word by word, and line by line.” Is. 28 : 13. 

xcvi 

“But in the darkness and the cloud. 

As over Sinai’s peaks of old. 

While Israel made their gods of gold, 

Altho’ the trumpet blew so loud.” Ex. 32 : l^L 


CIII 

“The thews of Anakim.” 


Deut. 2 : 10. 


cvi 

“The thousand years of peace.” Rev. 20 : 2-4. 

cvm 

“And vacant yearning, thougn with might, 

To scale the heavens’ highest height. 

Or dive below the wells of Death.” Rom. 10 : 6-8. 

cxiv 

“Who shall fix Her pillars?” (Knowledge.) Prov. 9 : 1. 
cxx 

“Like Paul with beasts I fought with Death.” 1 Cor. 15 : 32. 
cxxxi 

“O living will that shalt endure 

When all that is shall suffer shock, 

390 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


Maud. 


Rise in the spiritual rock. 

Flow through our deeds and make them 

1 John 2 

pure.” 

: 17; 1 Cor. 10 : 4. 

“To one that with us works.” 

1 Cor. 

3 : 9; Phil. 2 : 13. 

“The moon 

Of Eden.” 

Gen. 2 : 8. 

Part I. i. 6 
“The spirit of Cain.” 

1 John 3 : 12. 

8 

“We are ashes and dust.” 

Gen. 3 : 19. 

“My heart as a millstone.” 

Job 41 : 24. 

“Set my face as a flint.” 

Is. 50 : 7. 

9 

“When only not all men lie.” 

Ps. 116 : 11. 

12 

“Mammon.” 

Matt. 6 : 24. 

II 


“Neither savour nor salt.” 

Matt. 5 : 13. 

xiii. 3 

“That huge scape-goat of the race. 

Lev. 16 : 10. 

xvm. 2 

“The gates of Heaven.” 

Rev. 21 : 21. 


xvm. 3 

(A cedar of Lebanon.) “Thy great 

Forefathers of the thornless garden, there 

Shadowing the snow-limbed Exe.” Gen. 2:8; 3 : 18. 

Part II 
ii. 6 

“An old song vexes my ear; 

But that of Lamech is mine.” Gen. 4 : 23. 

v. 4 

“I never whispered a private affair 

No, not to myself in the closet alone. 

But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house.” 

Luke 12 : 3. 


391 


APPENDIX 


IDYLLS OF THE KING 


The Coming of Arthur. “Elfin Urim.” 

Ex. 28 : 

30. 

“Hath power to walk the waters like our Lord.” 

Matt. 14 : 

25. 

“Dark sayings from of old.” 

Ps. 78 

: 2. 

“The King will follow Christ and we the King.” 

1 Cor. 11 

: 1. 

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new.” 

Rev. 21 : 4 

i, 5. 

Gareth and Lynette. 



“A stone about his neck to drown him in it.” 

Matt. 18 

: 6. 

“When reviled, hast answered graciously.” 

1 Pet. 2 : 

23. 

Geraint and Enid. “Tho’ they sought 



Through all the provinces like those of old 



That lighted on Queen Esther.” 

Esther 2 

: 3. 


‘Here through the feeble twilight of this world 
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach 
That other where we see as we are seen.” 1 Cor. 13 : 12. 

‘Whose souls the old serpent long had drawn 
Down.” 

“Since high in Paradise 


O’er the four rivers.” 

“But o’er her meek eyes came a happy mist 
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green 
Before the useful trouble of the rain.” 

“He hears the judgment of the King of Kings.” 

Balin and Balan. 

“The Lost one Found was greeted as in Heaven.’ 

“Arimathaean Joseph.” 

“Thoms of the crown.” 

“That same spear 

Wherewith the Roman pierced the side of Christ.” John 19 ; 34. 

“Arm of flesh.” 2 Chron. 32 : 8. 

“I better prize 

The living dog than the dead lion.” Eccl. 9:4. 

Merlin and Vivien. 

“As Love, if Love be perfect, casts out fear.” 1 John 4 : 18. 

392 


Rev. 12 : 9. 
Gen. 2 : 10. 

Gen. 2 : 6. 
1 Tim. 6 : 15. 

Luke 15 : 32. 
Mark 15 : 43. 
Matt. 27 : 29. 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“There is no being pure. 

My cherub; saith not Holy Writ the same?” Rom. 3 : 10. 

“But neither marry nor are given 
In marriage, angels of our Lord’s report.” Matt. 22 : 30. 

“The sin that practice burns into the blood. 

And not the one dark hour which brings remorse. 

Will brand us, after, of whose fold we be: 

Or else were he, the holy king whose hymns 

Are chanted in our minster, worse than all.” 2 Sam. 11. 

“Seethed like the kid in its own mother’s milk.” Ex. 23 : 19. 

“An enemy that has left 
Death in the living waters.” 2 Kings 4 : 39, 40. 

“And stirr’d this vice in you which ruin’d man 
Through woman the first hour.” Gen. 3 : 12; 3 : 1-6. 

“Let her tongue rage like a fire.” James 3 : 6. 

“And judge all nature from her feet of clay.” Dan. 2 : 33. 

Lancelot and Elaine. 

“His mood was often like a fiend, and rose 
And drove him into wastes and solitudes.” Luke 8 : 29. 


“Fire in dry stubble.” 
“Since man’s first fall.” 


Is. 5 : 24. 
Gen. 3 : 1-6. 


“But loved me with a love beyond all love in women.” 

2 Sam. 1 : 26. 


The Holy Grail. 

“The cup, the cup itself, from which our Lord 
Drank at the last sad supper with his own.” Matt. 26 : 29. 


“After the day of darkness when the dead 
Went wandering o’er Moriah.” Matt. 27 : 53. 


“An adulterous race.” Matt. 12 : 39. 


“Galahad, when he heard of Merlin’s doom. 

Cried, ‘If I lose myself, I save myself!’ ” 

Matt. 10 : 39; 16 : 25. 


“When the Lord of all things made Himself 
Naked of glory for His mortal change.” Phil. 2 : 5-7. 


“Like a flying star 

Led on the gray-hair’d wisdom of the east.” Matt.. 2 : 9. 


393 


APPENDIX 


“But my time is hard at hand. 

And hence I go, and one will crown me King 

Far in the spiritual city.” 2 Tim. 4 : 6, 8. 

“Arimathsean Joseph.” Matt. 27 : 57. 

“Thou hast not lost thyself to save thyself.” Matt. 10 : 89. 
“For now there is a lion in the way.” Prov. 22 : 13. 
“What go ye into the wilderness to see?” Matt. 11 : 7. 
“Shoutings of all the sons of God.” Job 38 : 7. 

“Gateways in a glory like one pearl.” Rev. 21 : 12. 
“As ever shepherd knew his sheep.” John 10 : 14. 

“Perhaps, like him of Cana in Holy Writ, 

Our Arthur kept his best until the last.” John 2 : 1-10. 

“Glory and joy and honour to our Lord.” Rev. 4 : 11. 

“A seven-times heated furnace.” Dan. 3 : 19. 

“Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes.” 

Ezek. 10 : 12. 

“That One 

Who rose again.” 1 Cor. 15 : 20; 2 Cor. 5 : 15. 

Pelleas and Ettarre. “The flame about a sacrifice 

Kindled by fire from heaven.” 2 Chron. 7:1. 

“Would they have risen against me in their blood 
At the last day? I might have answered them 
Even before high God.” Rev. 6 : 10. 

“That own no lust because they have no law.” Rom. 4 : 15. 
“I have no sword, — 

Then Lancelot, ‘Yea, between thy lips — and sharp.’ ” Is. 49 : 2. 
The Last Tournament. 

“For I have flung thee pearls and find thee swine.” Matt. 7 : 6. 

“Fear God: honour the King.” 1 Pet. 2 : 17. 

“As the water Moab saw 

Come round by the East.” 2 Kings 3 : 20-23. 

“The scorpion-worm that twists in Hell 
And stings itself to everlasting death.” Is. 66 : 24. 

“Who marr’d Heaven’s image in thee thus?” Gen. 1 : 27. 

394 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“That oft I seem as he 

Of whom was written, ‘a sound is in his ears.’ ” 

Job 15 : 21. 

“The great lake of fire.” 

Rev. 20 : 14. 

“Conceits himself as God that he can make 
Figs out of thistles.” 

Matt. 7 : 16. 

“Michael trampling Satan.” 

Guinevere. 

“Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill.” 

Rev. 12 : 7-9. 

Matt. 25 : 1. 

“So she did not see the face 
Which then was as an angel’s.” 

Acts 6 : 15. 

Queen Mary. Act I, Sc. 2 

“ ‘Thou shalt not wed thy brother’s wife.’ — ’T is written, 

‘They shall be childless.’ ” Lev. 20 : 21. 

Sc. 3 

“From thine own mouth I judge thee.” 

Luke 19 : 22. 

“The old leaven.” 

1 Cor. 5 : 7. 

Sc. 5 

“The great angel of the church.” 

Rev. 2 : 1. 

“Whosoever 

Looketh after a woman.” 

Matt. 5 : 28. 

“Him who made Heaven and earth.” 

Ex. 20 : 11. 

“The living waters of the Faith.” 

John 4 : 10. 

“The palms of Christ.” 

John 12 : 13. 

“Many wolves among you.” 

Acts 20 : 29. 

Act II, Sc. 2 

“They go like those old Pharisees in John 

Convicted by their conscience, arrant cowards.” 

John 8 : 1-11. 

“Fruit of mine own body.” 

Ps. 132 : 11. 

Sc. 4 

“My foes are at my feet . . . 

There let them lie, your footstool.” 

Ps. 110 : 1. 

Act III, Sc. 1 
“Not red like Iscariot’s.” 

Matt. 10 : 4. 

“A pale horse for Death.” 

Rev. 6 : 8. 


395 


APPENDIX 


“Thou shalt do no murder.” 

Matt. 19 

: 18. 

“I have ears to hear.” 

Matt. 11 

: 15. 

“Verbum Dei . . . Word of God.” 

Rom. 10 : 

: 17. 

“That cannot spell Esaias from St. Paul.” 

Rom. 9 : 

: 27. 

Sc. 2 



“Ave Maria, gratia plena. 



Benedicta tu in mulieribus.” 

Luke 1 : 

: 28. 

“The scarlet thread of Rahab saved her life.” 



Joshua 

2 : 18; 6 ; 

: 17. 

“And marked me ev’n as Cain.” 

Gen. 4 : 

: 15. 


“Since your Herod’s death 
How oft hath Peter knocked at Mary’s gate. 

And Mary would have risen and let him in; 

But, Mary, there were those within the house 

Who would not have it.” Acts 12 : 11-17. 


“Sit benedictus fructus ventris tui.” Luke 1 : 42. 
“Our little sister of the Song of Songs.” Cant. 8 : 8. 
“Swept and garnished.” Matt. 12:44. 

“The devils in the swine.” Matt. 8 : 28-32. 
“Prince of Peace.” Is. 9 : 6. 

“Who will avenge me of mine enemies.” Is. 1 : 24. 
“Open, ye everlasting gates.” Ps. 24 : 7. 


Sc. 3 

“The blessed angels who rejoice 
Over one saved.” Luke 15 : 10. 

“The Lord who hath redeem’d us 
With his own blood and wash’d us from our sins.” Rev. 5 : 9. 

“All her breath should, incenselike. 

Rise to the heavens in grateful praise of Him.” Ps. 141 : 2. 

“These are forgiven . . . 

And range with . . . offal thrown 

Into the blind sea of forgetfulness.” Micah 7 : 19.. 

“To purchase for Himself a stainless bride.” Rev. 19 : 7. 

“He whom the Father hath appointed Head 
Of all his church.” Eph. 5 : 23. 


396 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


Sc. 4 

“Compel them to come in.” 

Luke 14 : 23. 

“I would they were cut off 

That trouble you.” 

Gcd. 5 : 12. 

“Little children. 

Love one another.” 1 John 3 : 18; 4:7. 

“I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” 

Matt. 10 : 34. 

“The Church on Peter’s rock.” 

Matt. 16 : 18. 

“When Herod-Henry first 

Began to batter at your English Church.’ 

” Acts 12 : 1. 

“The spotless bride of Christ.” 

Eph. 5 : 27. 

“Like Christ himself on Tabor.” 

Matt. 17 : 2. 

“God’s righteous judgment.” 

Rom. 2 : 5. 

“Ev’n Saint Peter in his time of fear 

Denied his Master, ay, and thrice, my Lord.” 

Matt. 26 : 69-74. 

“Burn and blast them root and branch.” 

Mai. 4 : 1. 

“His fan may thoroughly purge his floor.” 

Matt. 3 : 12. 

Sc. 5 

“The very Truth and very Word are one.” 

John 14 : 6; 1:1. 

“Back again into the dust we sprang from.’ 

” Gen. 3 : 19. 

Act IV, Sc. 2 

“There is more joy in Heaven.” 

Luke 15 : 7. 

“The trumpet of the dead.” 

1 Cor. 15 : 52. 

“How are the mighty fallen.” 

2 Sam. 1 : 19. 

“Power hath been given you.” 

John 19 : 11. 

Sc. 3 

“Nunc dimittis.” 

Luke 2 : 29. 

“It is expedient for one man to die.” 

John 11 : 50. 

“The penitent thief’s award 

And be with Christ the Lord in Paradise.” 

Luke 23 : 43. 


“Remember how God made the fierce fire seem 
To those three children like a pleasant dew.” Dan. 4 : 20-28. 

397 


APPENDIX 


“Saint Andrew.” Luke 6 : 14. 


“Whither should I flee for any help?” Is. 10 : 3; 20 : 6. 
“I am ashamed to lift my eyes to heaven.” Luke 18 : 13. 
“Refusing none 

That come to Thee for succour.” John 6 : 37. 

“O God the Son . . . when thou becamest 
Man in the flesh.” John 1 : 14. 

“O God the Father, not for little sins 
Didst thou yield up thy Son to huamn death.” John 3 : 16. 

“Unpardonable. Sin against the light.” Matt. 12 : 32. 

“Forgive me, Father, for no merit of mine. 

But that Thy name by man be glorified. 

And Thy most blessed Son’s who died for man.” 

John 17 : 1, 2. 


“Love of this world is hatred against God.” James 4 : 4. 

“Obey your King and Queen, and not for dread 
Of these alone, but from the fear of Him 
Whose ministers they be to govern you.” 1 Pei. 2 : 13, 14. 

“But do you good to all 

As much as in you lieth.” Gal. 6 : 10. 

“How hard it is 

For the rich man to enter Heaven.” Matt. 19 : 23. 


“Give to the poor. 

Ye give to God. He is with us in the poor.” Prov. 19 : 17. 

“God’s image.” Gen. 1 : 26. 

“Ignorance crying in the streets.” Prov. 1 : 20, 21. 
“Your original Adam-clay.” Gen. 2 : 7. 

“This hath offended, — this unworthy hand.” Matt. 5 : 30. 


Act V, Sc. 1 

“She is none of those who loathe the honeycomb.” 

Prov. 27 : 7. 


Sc. 2 

“It was thought we two 

Might make one flesh, and cleave unto each other 
As man and wife.” Matt. 19 : 5. 


398 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Labour in vain.” 

“A low voice from the dust.” 

“They say the gloom of Saul 
Was lightened by young David’s harp.” 

“Bring forth death.” 

Sc. 4 

“Soft Raiment.” 


Ps. 127 : 1. 
Is. 29 : 4. 

1 Sam. 16 : 23. 
James 1 : 15. 

Luke 7 : 25. 


“All things in common as in the days of the first church when Jesus 
Christ was King.” Acts 4 : 32. 

Sc. 5 

“Garner the wheat 

And burn the tares with unquenchable fire.” 

Matt. 3 : 12; 13 : 40. 

“The shadow of death.” Ps. 23 : 4. 


“And she loved much; pray God she be forgiven.” Luke 7 : 47. 
Harold. “All things make for good.” Rom. 8 : 28. 

Act I, Sc. 1 

“And hold their babies up to it, 

I think that they would Molochize them too. 

To have the heavens clear.” Lev. 18 : 21. 

“In Heaven signs. 

Signs upon earth.” Dan. 6 : 27. 

“War in heaven.” Rev. 12 : 7. 

“I have fought the fight and go.” 2 Tim. 4 : 7. 
“Gates of Pearl.” Rev. 21 : 21. 


“To the deaf adder thee, that will not dance 


However wisely charm’d.” Ps. 58 : 4. 

“Let brethren dwell together in unity.” Ps. 133 : 1. 
Sc. 2 

“Did not heaven speak to men in dreams of old.” Matt. 2 : 12. 

“Scape-goat.” Lev. 16 :8. 

Act II, Sc. 1 

“Fishers of men.” Matt. 4 : 19. 

“Jonah.” Jonah. 

399 


APPENDIX 


Sc. 8 

“For having lost myself to save myself.” 

Matt. 10 : 39. 

“Familiar spirit.” 

1 Sam. 28 : 7. 

“The torch . . . among your standing corn.” 

Judges 15 : 4, 5. 

Act III, Sc. 1 

“I have built the Lord a house.” 1 Kings 8 : 20. 

“Sing, Asaph! clash 

The cymbal, Heman; blow the trumpet, priest.” 

1 Chron. 25 : 1. 

“Fall, cloud, and fill the house.” 

2 Chron. 7 : 1 ; 1 Kings 8 : 10. 

“Jachin and Boaz.” 

1 Kings 7 : 21. 

“Treble denial of the tongue of flesh 

Like Peter’s when he fell.” Matt. 26 : 69-74. 

“To wail like Peter.” 

Matt. 26 : 75. 

“Talked with God.” 

Ex. 33 : 9. 

“Signs in heaven.” 

Dan. 6 : 27. 

Sc. 2 

“That which reigned called itself God.” 

2 Thess. 2:4. 

“Render unto Caesar.” 

Matt. 22 : 21. 

“The Good Shepherd.” 

John 10 : 11. 

Act IV, Sc. 1 

“The kingdoms of this world.” 

Rev. 11 : 15. 

“A king of men 

Not made but born, like the great King of all, 

A light among the oxen.” Luke 2 : 7. 

Sc. 3 

“A fast of forty days.” 

Matt. 4 : 2. 

Act V, Sc. 1 

“Mock-king, I am the messenger of God, 

His Norman Daniel ! Mene, Mene, Tekel ! 

” Dan. 5 : 25. 

“Evil for good.” 

Rom. 3 : 8. 

“Evil for evil.” 

Rom. 12 : 17. 

“The peace of God.” 

Phil. 4 : 7. 


400 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Were the great trumpet blowing Doomsday dawn.” 

1 Thess. 4 : 16. 

“Spear into pruning hook.” Joel 3 : 10. 

“God of battles.” Ps. 24 : 8. 


“There is one 

Come as Goliath came of yore.” 1 Sam. 17 : 40. 
“Pastor fugator . . . Grex trucidatur.” John 10 : 12, 13. 
“Equus cum equite dejiciatur . . . praecipitatur.” Ex. 15 : 1. 

“Glory to God in the highest.” Luke 2 : 14. 


Sc. 2 


“My punishment is more that I can bear. 

The Lover’s Tale. 

“When the outer lights are darkened.” 

“Till earth and heaven pass.” 
“Length of days.” 

“The bitterness of death.” 


” Gen. 4 : 13. 

Eccl. 12 : 3. 
Matt. 5 : 18. 
Ps. 91 : 16. 
1 Sam. 15 : 32. 


“As that other gazed. 

Shading his eyes till all the fiery cloud, 

The prophet and the chariot and the steeds. 

Sucked into oneness like a little star 

Were drunk into the inmost blue.” 2 Kings 2 : 11, 12. 

“A land of promise flowing with the milk 
And honey of delicious memories.” Ex. 3 : 8. 

“Exceeding sorrow unto Death.” Matt. 26 : 38. 


“She took the body of my past delight, 

Narded and swathed and balmed it for herself. 

And laid it in a sepulchre of rock.” John 19 : 39-41. 

“The evil flourish in the world.” Ps. 37 and 73. 


“Like a vain rich man. 

That having always prospered in the world. 

Folding his hands, deals comfortable words. 

To hearts wounded forever.” James. 2 : 15, 16. 


The Lover’s Tale. (Original edition.) 

“So, bearing on thro’ Being limitless 
The triumph of this foretaste, I had merged 
Glory in glory, without sense of change.” 2 Cor. 3 : 18. 


401 


APPENDIX 


Rizpah. “Rizpah.” 2 Sam. 21 : 8-10. 

“As the tree falls so it must lie.” Eccl. 11 : 3. 


“Flesh of my flesh — bone of my bone.” Gen. 2 : 23. 

“My Willy ’ill rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment ’ill sound.” 

1 Thess. 4 : 16. 

“Full of compassion and mercy.” Ps. 86 : 15. 

The Northern Cobbler. 

“A beast of the feald.” Ex. 23 : 11. 


“Like Saatan as fell 

Down out o’ heaven in Hell-fire.” Luke 10 : 18. 


In the Children’s Hospital. 

“Ye do it to me when ye do it to these.” Matt. 25 : 40. 

“Spirits in prison.” 1 Pet. 3 : 19. 

“Little children should come to me.” Matt. 19 : 14. 
Sir John Oldcastle. 

“Not least art thou, little Bethlehem 
In Judah, for in thee the Lord was born.” Micah 5 : 2. 


“Hereafter thou, fulfilling Pentecost, 

Must learn to speak the tongues of all the world.” 

Acts 2 : 1-4. 

“Thou bringest 

Not peace, a sword.” Matt. 10 : 34. 

“Antichrist.” 1 John 2 : 18. 

“The kingdoms of this world.” Rev. 11 : 15. 

“Lord, give thou power to thy two witnesses.” Rev. 11 : 3. 
“Persecute the Lord, 

And play the Saul that never will be Paul.” Acts 9 : 4. 
“Or such crimes 

As holy Paul — a shame to speak of them — 

Among the heathen.” Eph. 5 : 12. 

“The Gospel, the Priest’s pearl, flung down to swine.” 

Matt. 7 : 6. 

“Thy Gospel meant 

To course and range thro’ all the world.” Matt. 24 : 14. 


Rev. 17 : 5. 


“Babylon.” 

402 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“How long, 0 Lord, how long.” 

Rev. 6 : 10. 

“Thou living water.” 

John A : 10. 

“ He that thirsteth, come and drink.” 

Rev. 22 : 17. 

“Power of the keys.” 

Matt. 16 : 19. 

“Those three! the fourth 


Was like the Son of God ! Not burnt were they.” 

Dan. 3 : 25. 

“Caiaphas.” 

Matt. 26 : 57. 

Columbus. 


“The crowd’s roar fell as at the ‘Peace, be still.’ ” 

Mark 4 : 39. 

“For him who gave a new heaven, a new earth. 

As holy John had prophesied of me.” 

Rev. 21 : 1. 

“And saw the rivers roll from Paradise.” 

Gen. 2 : 10. 

“King David called the heavens a hide, a tent. 

Spread over earth.” 

Ps. 104 : 2. 


“Moriah with Jerusalem.” 2 Chron. 3 : 1. 

“And I saw 

The glory of the Lord flash up.” Rev. 21 : 19-27. 

“From Solomon’s now-recover’d Ophir, all 
The gold that Solomon’s navies carried home.” 

1 Kings 9 : 26-28. 

“O soul of little faith, slow to believe.” 

Matt. 14 : 31; Luke 24 : 25. 

“Time shall be no more.” Rev. 10 : 6. 

“Endure! thou hast done so well for man, that men 
Cry out against thee; was it otherwise 
With mine own son?” Matt. 10 : 24, 25. 

“Be not cast down. I lead thee by the hand. 

Fear not.” Deut. 31 : 8; Is. 41 : 13. 

The Voyage of Maeldune. 

“Remember the words of the Lord when he told us 

‘Vengeance is mine.’ ” Rom. 12 : 19. 

De Profundis. 

“From that great deep, before our world begins. 

Whereon the spirit of God moves as he will.” Gen. 1 : 2. 

“Let us make man.” Gen. 1 : 26. 

“That one light no man can look upon.” 1 Tim. 6 : 16. 

403 


APPENDIX 


“Hallowed be Thy Name.” Matt. 6 : 9. 

Becket. Prologue. 

“The spiritual body.” 1 Cor. 15 : 44. 

“Let her eat dust like the serpent, and be driven out of her Paradise.” 

Gen. 3 : 14. 


Act I, Sc. 1 

^ “King of Kings.” 1 Tim. 6 : 15. 

“The twelve Apostles.” Matt. 10 : 2. 


“Let them be Anathema.” 1 Cor. 16 : 22. 

Sc. 3 

‘The Lord be judged again by Pilate.” Matt. 27 : 2. 


“When murder, common 
As Nature’s death, like Egypt’s plague, had filled 
All things with blood, — when every doorway blushed. 

Dash’d red with that unhallow’d passover.” Ex. 7 : 19; 12 : 22. 

“Peter’s rock.” Matt. 16 : 18. 


“Life for a life.” Ex. 21 : 23. 

“Thou, the shepherd, hast betrayed the sheep.” John 10 : 12. 

“Mortify thy flesh.” Gal. 5 : 24; Col. 3 : 5. 
“Reeds that sway ... to the wind.” Matt. 11 :7. 

“Who but the bridegroom dares to judge the bride?” 

John 3 : 29. 

“As gold outvalues dross; light, darkness; Abel, Cain.” 

Heb. 11 : 4, 5, 8. 


“Saint Lazarus.” John 11. 

“Deal gently with the young man Absalom.” 2 Sam. 18 : 5. 
“Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” 

Ps. 118 : 26. 


Sc. 4 


“Ye have drunken of my cup.” Matt. 20 : 23. 
“Bidden to our supper.” Luke 14 : 7-24. 

“Steams . . . like the altar at Jerusalem.” 2 Sam. 24 : 18. 

“Call in the poor.” Matt. 22 : 9. 

“The princess sat in judgment against me.” Ps. 119 : 23. 
“The Lord hath prepared your table.” Ps. 23 : 5. 


404 




BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Sheep without the shepherd.” Matt. 9 : 36. 

“With Cain’s answer; my Lord. Am I his keeper?” 

The Lord hath set his mark upon him that no man should murder 
him.” Gen. 4 : 9-15. 

“With Cain ... in the land of Nod.” Gen. 4 : 16. 


“Smite him with the edge of the sword.” 
“Smite the shepherd, and the sheep are scattered.” 
“His Lord and Master in Christ.” 
“Who fed you in the wilderness.” 

Act II, Sc. 1 
“The voice of the deep.” 

“Turn the world upside down.” 

Sc. 2 

“Thief -like fled ... no man pursuing.” 
“Take heed he do not turn and rend you.” 
“None other God but me.” 


Deut. 13 : 15. 

Zech. 13 : 7. 
Matt. 20 : 27. 
Deut. 8 : 16. 

Bob. 3 : 10. 
Acts 17 : 6. 

Prov. 28 : 1. 
Matt. 7 : 6. 
Ex. 20 : 3. 


“Nay, if they were defective as Saint Peter 
Denying Christ, who yet defied the tyrant. 

We held by his defiance, not by his defect.” 

Matt. 26 : 70; Acts 4 : 19. 

“What manner of man he was.” James 1 : 24. 

“Yea, let a stranger spoil his heritage. 

And let another take his bishoprick.” Acts 1 : 20. 

“Withstood ... to their faces.” Gal. 2 : 11. 

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings praise.” Ps. 8 : 2. 


“A fisher of men.” Matt. 4 : 19. 

“Agree with him quickly.” Matt. 5 : 25. 

“Still choose Barabbas rather than the Christ.” Matt. 27 : 21. 


“Absolve the left-hand thief and damn the right.” Luke 23 : 43. 


“On mine own self . . . had had no power except.” 

John 19 : 11. 


“Thou art no prophet 
Nor yet a prophet’s son.” 


Amos 7 ; 14. 


APPENDIX 


Act III, Sc. 1 

“ Solomon-shaming flowers.” Matt. 6 : 29. 

‘If I had been Eve in the garden, I shouldn’t have minded the apple. 
For what’s an apple?” Gen. 3 : 6. 

“The seventh Commandment.” Ex. 20 : 14. 

Sc. 3 

“A house on sand.” Matt. 7 : 26, 27. 

“Pulled . . . the church . . . down upon his own head.” 

Judges 16 : 29. 

“A thief at night . . . hears a door open, . . . 

And thinks, ‘The master.’ ” Matt. 24 : 43. 

“The thunder of the captains and the shouting.” Job 39 : 25. 
“The miraculous draught.” 

“Goliathizing.” 

“A whole Peter’s sheet.” 

“Magdalen.” 

“The spouse of the great king.” 

“The daughter of Zion lies beside the way.’ 


“The priests of Baal.” 

“The kiss of peace.” 

“Ay, if this if be like the Devil’s if. 
Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” 

“Thou hast trodden this winepress alone.’ 
“The drop may hollow out the dead stone. 

“My visions in the Lord.” 
‘Murder her one shepherd, that the sheep.” 
Act IV, Sc. 2 

“The Judas-lover of our passion-play.” 
“Our great high-priest.” 

Act V, Sc. 1 
“The Decalogue.” 

Sc. 2 

“My kingdom is not of this world.” 

406 


Luke 5 : 6. 

1 Sam. 17 : 4. 
Acts 10 : 11. 

Luke 8 : 2. 
Rev. 21 : 9. 
* Is. 1 : 8. 
2 Kings 10 : 19. 
1 Thess. 5 : 26. 

Matt. 4 : 9. 
Is. 63 : 3. 
’ Job 14 : 19. 

2 Cor. 12 : 1. 
Matt. 26 : 31. 

Matt. 26 : 47. 
Heb. 4 : 14. 

Ex. 20. 

John 18 : 36. 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“A policy of wise pardon. 
Wins here, as there, to bless thine enemies.” 


“This world’s leaven.” 

“These wells of Marah.” 

‘In this life and in the life to come.” 

“They spread their raiment down.” 

‘Give to the King the things that are the King’s, 

Matt . 22 : 21. 


Matt. 5 : 44, 45. 
1 Cor. 5 : 7. 
Ex. 15 : 23. 
1 Tim. 4 : 8. 
Matt. 21 : 8. 


And those of God to God.” 

‘Mailed in the perfect panoply of faith.” 
‘The great day 


E'ph. 6 : 13. 


When God makes up his jewels.” Mai. 3 : 17. 

“Would that I could bear thy cross.” Matt. 27 : 32. 
“They seek occasion for your death.” Mark 14 : 55. 
“Why do the heathen rage?” Ps. 2 : 1. 

Sc. 3 

“Die with him and be glorified together.” Rom. 8 : 17. 
“Though . . . the great deeps were broken up again.” Gen. 7 : 11. 

“Knock and it shall be opened.” Matt. 7 : 7. 

“Not tho’ it be their hour, the power of darkness.” Luke 22 : 53. 

“He is not yet ascended to the Father.” John 20 : 17. 
“Fight out the good fight, die conqueror.” 2 Tim. 4 : 7. 

“At the right hand of Power 
Power and great glory — for thy Church, O Lord — 

Into thy hands, O Lord, into thy hands !” Luke 22 : 69; 23 : 46. 

“Will the earth gape and swallow us?” Num. 16 : 32. 

Achilles. “Smoke from a city goes to heaven.” Josh. 8 : 20. 

To E. Fitzgerald. “As if they knew your diet spares 
Whatever moved in that full sheet 
Let down to Peter at his prayers.” Acts 10 : 11. 

“Grapes of Eshcol hugeness.” Num. 13 : 23. 

The Wreck. “The wages of sin is death.” Rom. 6 : 23. 


“I am the Jonah; the crew should cast me into the deep.” 

Jonah 1 


15. 


407 




APPENDIX 


“Was it well with the child ? ” 2 Kings 4 : 26. 

Despair. 

“He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire.” 

Ex. 13 : 21. 

“Ah God ... I was taking the name in vain.” Ex. 20 : 7. 

“Till the sun and moon of our Science are both of them turned 
into blood.” Joel 2 : 31. 

“Does what he will with his own.” Matt. 20 : 15. 

The Flight. “The godless Jephtha vows his child . . . 

To one cast of the dice.” Judges 11 : 30. 

Early Spring. “Makes all things new.” Rev. 21 : 15. 

“A Jacob’s ladder falls.” Gen. 28 : 12. 

Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After. 

“Love your enemy, bless your haters, said the Greatest of the great.” 

Matt. 5 : 44. 


“Have we grown at last beyond the passions of the primal clan. 

Kill your enemy, for you hate him.” Matt. 5 : 43. 

“Dust to dust.” Eccl. 3 : 20; Job 34 : 15. 


“What are men that he should heed us? cried the king of sacred 
song.” Ps. 8 : 4. 

“The trampled serpent.” Gen. 3 : 15. 

“Follow you the star that lights a desert pathway, yours or mine. 
Forward till you see the highest Human Nature is divine.” 

Matt. 2 : 2. 


“Follow Light and do the Right — for man can half control his doom — 
Till you find the deathless Angel seated in the vacant tomb.” 

John 20 : 12. 


The Charge of the Heavy Brigade. 

Epilogue 

“Though carved in harder stone 
The falling drop will make his name 
As mortal as my own.” Job 14 : 19. 


The Falcon. “Happy was the prodigal son.” Luke 15 : 20-23. 

The Promise of May. Act I 

“Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” 

Is. 22 : 13; 1 Cor. 15 : 32. 


408 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“Yes, tho’ the fire should run along the ground, 

As it once did in Egypt.” Ex. 9 : 23. 

Act II 

“As long as the man sarved for ’is sweet’art i’ Scripture.” 

Gen. 29 : 20. 

Act III 

“Forgive him seventy times and seven.” Matt. 18 : 22. 
“This valley of tears.” Ps. 84 :6. 

Vastness. “Innocence seethed in her mother’s milk.” Ex. 34 : 26. 

“He that has nail’d all flesh to the Cross.” Gal. 5 : 24. 

“The dead are not dead, but alive.” 

Matt. 22 : 32; Mark 12 : 27; Luke 10 : 38. 

Owd Roa. 

“Faaithful an’ True — them words be i’ Scriptur’.” Rev. 22 : 6. 

“Or like t’other Hangel i’ Scriptur’ at summun seed i’ the fla'ame. 
When summun ’ed hax’d fur a son, an’ ’e promised a‘ son to she.” 

Judges 13 : 19-21. 
MaU. 12 : 36. 

Ex. 20 : 5. 
Matt. 27 ; 51. 

Gen. 4. 
2 Tim. 2 : 3. 
Gen. 4 : 15. 
Gen. 1 : 27. 


The Ring. 

Forlorn. 

Happy. 


“Judgment daay.” 

“Father’s fault visited on the children.’ 
“The veil is rending.” 
“Daughter of the seed of Cain.” 
“My soldier of the cross.” 

“A crueller mark than Cain’s.” 
“Creature which in Eden was divine.” 


‘When we shall stand transfigured, like Christ on Hermon hill.” 

Matt. 17 : 1, 2. 


“Clove the Moslem . . . moon . . . and changed it into blood.” 

Joel 2 : 31. 

“ ‘Libera me, Domine!’ you sang the Psalm.” . Ps. 6. 

“If man and wife be but one flesh.” Matt. 19 : 6. 

To Mary Boyle. “Dives and Lazarus.” Luke 16 : 19-31. 

Merlin and the Gleam. “Drew to the valley 

Named of the shadow.” Ps. 23 : 4. 

Romney’s Remorse. “Ay, but when the shout 

Of his descending peals from heaven.” 1 Thess. 4 : 16. 

409 


APPENDIX 


“Why left you wife and children? for my sake? 

According to my word?” Mark 10 : 29. 

“The coals of fire you heap upon my head 


Have crazed me.” 

Rom. 12 : 20. 

Crossing the Bar. “I hope to see my Pilot face to face. 

When I have crost the bar.” 


1 John 3 : 2; 

1 Car. 13 : 12. 

The Foresters. Act I, Sc. 1 


“Sufficient for the day.” 

Matt. 6 : 34. 

Act II, Sc. 1 


“The serpent that had crept into the garden.” Gen. 3 : 1. 

“The palms of Paradise.” 

Rev. 7 : 9. 

Act III, Sc. 1 


“Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor.” 

Matt. 19 : 21. 

Act IV, Sc. 1 


“The King of Kings.” 

Rev. 17 : 14. 

“Will hang as high as Haman.” 

Esth. 7 : 9, 10. 

“Beelzebub.” 

Matt. 10 : 25. 

“I am like the man 


In Holy Writ, who brought his talent back.” 

Matt. 25 : 25. 

Akbar’s Dream. 


“Allah, says their sacred book, is Love.” 

1 John 4 : 16. 

“Love one another, little ones.” John 13 : 33, 34. 

“Bless your persecutors.” 

Rom. 12 : 14. 

“The Sun of Righteousness.” 

Mai. 4 : 2. 

“Bear false witness.” 

Ex. 20 : 16. 

The Church Warden. “The narra gaate.” 

Matt. 7 : 14. 

“The tongue’s sit afire o’ Hell.” 

James 3 : 6. 

“By the Graace o’ the Lord — I have wot I have.” 


1 Car. 15 : 10. 

“The Kingdom o’ Heaven.” 

Matt. 3 : 2. 

Charity. “For a woman ruined the world, 


As God’s own Scriptures tell.” 

Gen. 3 : 1-6. 

“I had cursed — the day I was born.” 

Job 3 : 3. 


410 


BIBLICAL REFERENCES 


“The Heaven of Heavens.” 
“Pace to face with her Lord.” 

The Dawn. “A babe in the red-hot palms 

Of a Moloch of Tyre.” 

The Dreamer. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” 
Riflemen Form. 

“Are figs of thistles? Or grapes of thorns? 


1 Kings 8 : 27. 
1 Cor. 13 : 12. 

2 Kings 23 : 10. 
Matt. 5 : 5. 

” Matt. 7 : 16. 


411 



APPENDIX 

ii 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Mr. John Hall Wheelock has put me under great obligations by his 
careful revision and completion of the bibliography which I made in 
1898, particularly with reference to translations and books published 
since 1892. 


December, 1919. 


H. v. D. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BOOKS REFERRING TO TENNYSON 
PUBLISHED PREVIOUS TO 1893 


A New Spirit of the Age. Tennyson’s portrait and a sketch of his character. By 
Richard Hengist Horne. London: Smith Elder & Co. 1844. 

Living Poets ; and their Services to the Cause of Political Freedom and Human Progress. 
By W. J. Fox. Published from the Reporter’s notes. London: 1845. (Notice of 
Tennyson in vol. I, pp. 248-265.) 

Conversation on the Poets. By James Russell Lowell. Cambridge (U. S. A.). 1846. 
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets. A sketch of Tennyson. By Wil- 
liam Howitt. 1847. 

Lectures and Addresses. An estimate of Tennyson in this volume. By Rev. F. W. Rob- 
ertson. London: Smith Elder & Co. (Pp. 124-141.) 1858. 

Tennyson and his Teachers. By Peter Bayne. Edinburgh and London: James Hogg 
& Sons. 1859. 

The Poetical Character; illustrated from the Works of Alfred Tennyson, DCL., Poet 
Laureate. London: Bell & Daldy. 1859. 

Poems and Essays. By William Caldwell Roscoe. London: Chapman & Hall. (Pp. 
1-37 on Tennyson.) 1860. 

^4n Index to In Memoriam. London: Edward Moxon & Co. 1862. 

An Analysis of In Memoriam. By the late Rev. Frederick W. Robertson of Brighton. 
London: Smith Elder & Co. 1862. 

Three Great Teachers; Carlyle, Tennyson and Ruskin. By Alexander H. Japp, LL.D. 
London: Smith Elder & Co. 1865. 

Tennysoniana : Notes Bibliographical and Critical on Early Poems of Alfred and C. Ten - 
nyson. London: Basil Montague Pickering. 1866. 

(The author’s name is not on the title-page, but the book is known to be the work of 
Richard Herne Shepherd.) 

Afternoon Lectures on Literature and Art. Fourth Series. London: Bell & Daldy. 1867. 
(A review of Tennyson’s Works, pp. 47-94. By John K. Ingram, LL.D.) 

A Study of the Works of Alfred Tennyson. By Edward Campbell Tainsh. London: 
Chapman & Hall. 1868. Second Edition. 1869. 

Jerrold, Tennyson and Macaulay. By James Hutchison Sterling, LL.D. Edinburgh: 
Edmunston & Douglas. 1868. 

Concordance to the Entire Works of Alfred Tennyson. By D. B. Brightwell. London: 
* E. Moxon & Co. 1869. 

Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning. By Edward Dowden, in Afternoon Lectures in Litera- 
ture and Arts, published in 1869, reprinted in Studies in Literature. London: Kegan 
Paul, Trench & Co. Fifth Edition. 1889. 

Modem Men of Letters Honestly Criticized. By J. Hain Friswell. (Pp. 145-146, chap- 
ter on Alfred Tennyson.) London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1870. 

Tennyson. By Walter Irving. Edinburgh: Maclachlan & Stewart. 1873. 

Master Spirits. By Robert Buchanan. London: Harry S. King & Co. 1873. (Essay 
on Tennyson, Heine, and DeMusset, pp. 54-88.) 

415 


APPENDIX 


Victorian Poets. By Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 
1875. (A review of Tennyson in this volume; supplemented by an additional chapter in 
the Edition of 1887.) 

Studies in the Idylls. By Henry Elsdale. London: H. S. King & Co. 1878. 
Tennysoniana. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. By Richard Herne Shepherd. 
London: Pickering & Co. 1879. 

- Lessons from My Masters. By Peter Bayne. London: John Clarke & Co. 1879. 

Alfred Tennyson, His Life and Works. By Walter E. Wace. Edinburgh: Macniven & 
Wallace. 1881. 

A Key to Tennyson’s In Memoriam. By Alfred Gatty, D.D. London: D. Bogue. 
1881. 

A Study of The Princess. By S. E. Dawson. Montreal: Dawson Brothers. 1882. 
The Earlier and Less Known Poems of Tennyson. By C. E. Mathews. Birmingham: 
1883. 

Lord Tennyson: A Biographical Sketch. By Henry J. Jennings. London: Chatto & 
Windus. 1884. 

Tennyson’ 8 In Memoriam: Its Purpose and Structure. By John F. Genung. Boston: 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884. 

Urbana Script. By Arthur Galton. London: Elliot Stock. 1885. (Essay on Lord 
Tennyson, pp. 36-38.) 

Studies on the Legend of the Holy Brail. By Alfred Nutt. London: David Nutt. 1888. 
A Companion to In Memoriam. By Elizabeth Rachel Chapman. London: Macmillan 
& Co. 1888. 

The Tennyson Flora: Three Lectures. By Leo H. Grindon. (Published as Appendix 
to Report of the Manchester Field Naturalists and Archaeological Society for 1887.) 

The Poetry of Tennyson. By Henry van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 
London: Elkin Mathews. 1889. 

In Tennyson Land. By John Cuming Walters. Illustrated. London: George Red- 
way. 1890. 

The Poetry of Tennyson. By Henry van Dyke. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. 
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1891. 

Illustrations of Tennyson. By John Churton Collins. London: Chatto & Windus. 
1891. 

Tennyson 8 In Memoriam : Second Edition. By J. F. Genung. Boston: Houghton, 
Mifflin Co. 1891. 

Key to In Memoriam. New Edition. By A. Gatty. Macmillan & Co. 1891. 

Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning. By A. T. Ritchie. Macmillan & 
Co. 1892. 

The Poetry of Tennyson. By Henry van Dyke. Third Edition. New York: Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. London: Elkin Mathews. 1892. 

The Golden Guess. By John Vance Cheney. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1892. (Essay 
on Tennyson and his Critics.) 

Homes and Haunts of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate. By George G. Napier, 
M.A. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons. 1892. 

Tennyson’s Life and Poetry; and Mistakes Concerning Tennyson. By Eugene Parsons. 
Chicago: 1892. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By A. Waugh, B.A., Oxon. London. 1892. 

Tennyson and “In Memoriam” ; an Appreciation and a Study. By Joseph Jacobs. 
London: David Nutt. 1892. 


416 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BOOKS ON TENNYSON PUBLISHED 
SINCE 1892. PARTIAL LIST 

N .B. The most indispensable of all the books on Tennyson is the noble Memoir written 
by his son, Hallam, Lord Tennyson, former Governor-General of Australia. 

A Study of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By Edward Campbell Tanish. New 
Edition. Macmillan & Co. 1893. 

Lord Tennyson : A Biographical Sketch. By Henry J. Jennings. Second Edition. Lon- 
don: Chatto & Windus. 1893. 

Essays on Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. By H. Littledale. Macmillan & Co. 
1893. 

The Poems of Arthur Henry Hallam Together with His Essay on the Lyrical Poems of 
Alfred Tennyson. Edited with an introduction by Richard Le Gallienne. London: Elkin 
Mathews & John Lane. New York: Macmillan & Co. 1893. 

Tennyson's Heroes and Heroines. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. London: Tuck & Sons. 
1893. 

The Scenery of Tennyson's Poems. Etchings after drawings by various authors. Letter- 
press by B. Francis. London: J. & E. Bumpus. 1893. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and His Friends. A series of 25 portraits and frontispiece in 
photogravure from the negatives of Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron and H. H. H. 
Cameron. Reminiscences by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, with an introduction by H. H. 
Hay Cameron. London: T. Fisher Unwin. 1893. 

New Studies in Tennyson. By Morton Luce. Second Edition. Clifton: J. Barker 
& Son. 1893. 

Tennyson : his Art and Relation to Modem Life. By Stopford A. Brooke. London: 
Isbister & Co. 1894. 

Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and Arthurian Story from the XVlth Century. By M. 
W. Maccallum. Glasgow: Maclehose & Sons. 1894. 

A Handbook to the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By Morton Luce. London: George 
Bell & Sons. 1895. 

The Growth of the Idylls of the King. By Richard Jones. Philadelphia: Lippincott 
Co. 1895. 

A Primer of Tennyson with a Critical Essay. By William Macneile Dixon. Litt.D., 
A.M., LL.B. (Mason College.) London: Methuen & Co. 1896. 

Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. Edited by W. R. Nicoll and T. J. Wise. 
(Contains “The Building of the Idylls,” and “Tennysoniana.”) .New York: Dodd, Mead 
& Co. 1896. 

The Poetry of Tennyson. By Henry van Dyke. Eighth Edition (in the Cameo Series, 
with new essay on In Memoriam). New York: Scribners. 1897. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson : A Memoir by His Son, Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 2 vols. Mac- 
millan & Co. 1897. 

Tennyson, His Homes, His Friends and His Work. By E. L. Cary. New York: G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons. 1898. 

Tennyson, the Story of His Life. By Evan J. Cuthbertson. London: W. & R. Cham- 
bers. 1898. 

Tennyson' 8 Teaching. By John Oates. London: James Bowden. 1898. 

Tennyson's Debt to Environment. By W. G. Ward. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 
1898. 

Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates. By F. Harrison. Macmillan 
& Co. 1899. 

Tennyson, A Critical Study. By Stephen Gwynn. Glasgow: Blackie & Son. 1899. 
Alfred Tennyson. By Robert F. Horton. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1900. 

417 


APPENDIX 


The Mind of Tennyson. By E. H. Sneath. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1900. 
Tennyson as a Religious Teacher. By C. F. G. Masterman. London: Methuen & Co. 
1900. 

Memoirs of the Tennysons. By H. D. Rawnsley. Macmillan & Co. 1900. 

Out of Doors with Tennyson. By E. S. Brooks. Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 
1900. 

Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam. By A. C. Bradley. Macmillan & Co. 1901. 
Alfred Tennyson. By Andrew Lang. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1901. 

Thiee Aspects of the Late Lord Tennyson. By J. M. Moore. Manchester: Marsden 
& Co. 1901. 

Tennyson. By M. Luce. Macmillan & Co. 1901. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: a Study of His Life and Work. By Arthur Waugh. London: 
William Heinemann. 1902. 

Alfred Tennyson. ( English Men of Letters.) By Alfred C. Lyall. Macmillan & Co. 

1902. 

Elegy of Faith: A Study of In Memoriam. By W. Rader. New York: T. Y. Crowell 
& Co. 1902. 

Alfred Tennyson. By O. Elton. London: David Nutt. 1902. 

Browning and Tennyson as Teachers. By J. M. Robertson. London: 1903. 
Tennyson. By J. K. Chesterton, and R. Garnett. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 

1903. 

Bibliography of the First Editions in Book Form of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 
New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1903. 

Glimpses of Tennyson, Relatives and Friends. By A. G. Weld. New York: Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. 1903. 

Classical Echoes in Tennyson. By W. P. Mustard. New York: Macmillan & 
Co. 1904. 

Meaning of the Idylls of the King. By C. B. Pallen. New York: American Book Co. 

1904. 

Spiritual Teaching of Tennyson's “ In Memoriam" ; six Lenten addresses. London: 
Gardner Darton & Co. 1904. 

Notes on Tennyson’s Passing of Arthur. By N. Stockwell. London: Simpkin, Mar- 
shall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. 1904. 

Studies in Religion and Literature. By W. S. Lilly. London: Chapman and Hall. 1904. 
(Contains “Mission of Tennyson.”) 

Homes of Tennyson. By A. Patterson. Macmillan & Co. 1905. 

Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By J. C. Thomson. New York: 
G. E. Stechert & Co. 1905. 

Study of the Idylls of the King. By Mrs. H. A. Davidson. Author, Albany, N. Y. 1905. 
Prolegomena to In Memoriam. By Thomas Davidson. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. 
1906. 

Child’s Recollections of Tennyson. By E. N. Ellison. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 
1906. 

Cambridge Apostles. By F. A. Brookfield. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1906. 
(Contains valuable matter on Tennyson.) 

Social Ideals of Tennyson as Related to His Time. By W. C. Gordon. Chicago: Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press. 1906. 

Poetry and Philosophy of Tennyson. By E. H. Griggs. New York: B. W. Huebsch. 
1906. 

Nature Knowledge in Modem Poetry. By A. Mackie. New York: Longmans, Green 
& Co. 1906. (Contains chapters on Tennyson.) 

Alfred Tennyson. By Arthur C. Benson. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1907. 
Notes on Tennyson’ 8 Coming and Passing of Arthur. By W. Raybould. London: Simp- 
kin, Marshall, Hamilton & Kent. 1907. 

Immortality of the Soul in Poems of Tennyson and Browning. By H. Jones. Boston: 
Beacon Press. 1907. 


418 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Modem Studies. By O. Elton. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1907. (Con- 
tains “Tennyson, an inaugural lecture.”) 

Higher Ministries of Recent English Poetry. By F. Gunsaulus. New York: Fleming 
H. Revell & Co. 1907. (Contains chapters on Tennyson.) 

The Idylls and the Ages. By J. F. Genung. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co. 1907. 
Tennyson. By W. E. Smyser. Cincinnati: Eaton & Main. 1907. 

The Age of Tennyson. By H. Walker. Macmillan & Co. 1908. 

Analysis of Tennyson's In Memoriam. By F. W. Robertson. New York: Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. 1908. 

Science and a Future Life and Other Essays. By F. W. H. Myers. Macmillan & Co. 

1908. (Contains “Tennyson as a prophet.”) 

Tennyson. By W. P. Ker. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1909. 

Tennyson and Scientific Theology. By J. W. Hayes. London: E. Stock. 1909. 
Tennyson' 8 Idylls of the King. By A. W. Fox. London: S. S. A. 1909. 

Commentary upon Tennyson's In Memoriam. By H. E. Shepard. New York: Neale 
Publishing Co. 1909. 

Tennyson. By A. Sidgwick. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. 1909. 

The Centenary of Tennyson. By Sir T. Herbert Warren. Oxford University Press. 

1909. 

Tennyson as a Thinker. By H. S. Salt. London: A. C. Fifield. 1909. 

Tennyson. By H. Jones. Oxford University Press. 1909. 

Notes on the Arthurian Epic and the Idylls of the King. By W. Reade. Author: 1909. 
Repetition and Parallelism in Tennyson. By E. Lauvri&re. Oxford University Press. 

1910. 

Tennyson as a Student and Poet of Nature. By N. and W. L. Lockyer. Macmillan 
& Co. 1910. 

Tennyson and His Friends. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. London: Macmillan 
& Co. 1911. 

Days with the English Poets: Tennyson, Browning and Byron. By Walter Price. Lon- 
don: Hodder & Stoughton. 1911. 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, His Homes and Haunts. By B. G. Ambler. London: T. C. 
and E. C. Jack. 1911. 

Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning. By S. F. Gingerich. G. Wahr, Ann Arbor, 
Michigan. 1911. 

Memories of the Tennysons. By H. D. Rawnsley. Macmillan & Co. 1912. 

Tennyson. By Aaron Watson. London: T. C. and E. C. Jack. 1912. 

Tennyson and His Poetry. By R. B. Johnson. London: George G. Harrap & Co. 1918. 
Through England with Tennyson. By O. Huckel. New York: T. Y. Crowell & Co. 1913. 
Life of a Little College. By A. M. MacMechan. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co. 1914. 
(Contains “Tennyson as an Artist.”) 

Concordance to the Poetical and Dramatic Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By A. E. 
Baker. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1914. 

The Life and Times of Tennyson. By Thomas R. Lounsberry. New Haven: Yale 
University Press. 1915. 

Life and Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. By A. Turnbull. New York: Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. 1915. 

A Tennyson Dictionary. By A. E. Baker. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1916. 
Tennyson's “In Memoriam .” By T. A. Moxon. London: Skeffington & Sons. 1917. 
Tennyson' 8 Use of the Bible. By E. M. Robinson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 
1917. 

Alfred Tennyson: How to Know Him. By R. M. Alden. Indianapolis: Bobbs, Merrill 
Co. 1917. 

The Reaction Against Tennyson. By A. C. Bradley. London: The English Associa- 
tion. 1918. 

Formative Types in English Poetry. By George Herbert Palmer. Boston: Houghton, 
Mifflin Co. 1918. (See pages 225-269.) 

419 


APPENDIX 


SELECT POEMS AND ANNOTATED EDITIONS 


Published by the Oxford University Press, London and New York: 

Poems, 1830-1865. With Introduction by Sir T. Herbert Warren, D. C. L., President 
of Magdalen College, Oxford. 1910. 

English Idylls and Other Poems (1842-1855). Edited by B. C. Mulliner. 

Shorter Poems and Lyrics (1833-1842). By the same editor. 

Poems Published in 1842. With an Introduction and Notes by A. M. D. Hughes. 
Children’s Tennyson. Edited by M. Byron. 

Enid. Edited by C. B. Wheeler. 

Lady of Shalott and Other Poems. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by B. C. Mul- 
liner. 

The Princess. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by H. Allsopp. 

Mnone and the Lotus Eaters. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by F. A. Cavenagh. 
Selected Poems: The Lotus Eaters; Ulysses; Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton; The Coming of Arthur; The Passing of Arthur. Edited by C. B. Wheeler, and F. 
A. Cavenagh. 

The Coming of Arthur; The Passing of Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, 
by C. B. Wheeler. 

Enoch Arden. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by H. Marwick. 

Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York: 

Poems. Chosen and edited, with Introduction, by Dr. Henry van Dyke. 

Published by Ginn & Co., Boston and New York. 

The Coming of Arthur; Gareth and Lynette; Launcelot and Elaine; Quest of the Holy 
Grail; The Passing of Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Willis Boughton. 
The Princess. Edited by A. S. Cook. 

Poems of Tennyson. Edited with introduction and notes, by Henry van Dyke. 
(Athenaeum Press Series.) 

Published by Macmillan & Co., London and New York: 

Tennyson’s Works with Notes by the Author. Edited, with Memoir, by Hallam, Lord 
Tennyson. (6 vols.) 

Lyrical Poems. Selected and Annotated by Francis Turner Palgrave. 

Lyric Poems. Edited by Ernest Rhys. 

Selections from Tennyson. With Introduction and Notes by F. J. Rowe, M.A., and 
W. T. Webb, M.A. 

Shorter Poems. Edited by C. R. Nutter. 

Select Poems. With Introduction and Notes, for the Use of Schools, by Hereford P. 
George and W. H. Hadow. 

Ballads and Other Poems. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 

English Idylls and Other Poems. 'With Introduction and Notes by J. H. Fowler. 
Selections, Tiresias and Other Poems. With Introduction and Notes by F. J. Rowe, 
M.A. and W. T. Webb, M.A. 

Tennyson for the Young. Selections from Lord Tennyson’s Poems. Edited with Notes 
by the Rev. Alfred Ainger, M.A., LL.D., Canon of Bristol. 

The Children’s Tennyson. Arranged for Reading and Recitation in Elementary Schools. 
The Coming of Arthur, and the Passing of Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, 
by Prof. F. J. Rowe, of Calcutta. 

Enoch Arden. With Introduction and Notes, by W. T. Webb, M.A. 

Aylmer's Field. By W. T. Webb, M.A. 

The Princess. By P. M. Wallace, M.A. 

The Princess. Edited by W. Farrand. 

The Princess and Maud. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 

420 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Gareth and Lynette. By G. C. Macauley, M.A. 

Geraint and Enid. By the same editor. 

The Holy Grail. By the same editor. 

Guinevere. By the same editor. 

Idylls of the King. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by C. W. French. 

Idylls of the King. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 

Idylls of the King. Edited by W. T. Vlymen. 

In Memoriam. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by J. W. Pearce. 

In Memonam. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 

In Memoriam.. With Analysis and Notes by H. M. Percival. 

In Memoriam. Edited, with Notes, by Dr. William J. Rolfe, and with the Poetical 
Remains of Arthur Henry Hallam. 

Lancelot and Elaine. Edited by F. J. Rowe, M.A. 

Lotus Eaters; Ulysses; Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington ; Maud; The Com- 
ing of Arthur; The Passing of Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by F. J. 
Rowe, M.A. and W. T. Webb, M.A. 

CEnone and Other Poems. By the same editors. 

Ulysses and Columbus. Edited by H. E. Notatt. 

The Cup. With Introduction and Notes, by H. B. Cotterill. 

Bechet and Other Plays. Edited by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. 

Poems. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by J. K. Allen. 

Published by the Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston and New York: 

Select Poems of Tennyson. By Dr. William J. Rolfe. 

The Young People's Tennyson. By Dr. William J. Rolfe. 

Selected Idylls of the King; The Coming of Arthur; The Holy Grail; The Passing of 
Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Franklin T. Baker. 

Launcelot and Elaine. Edited by Dr. William J. Rolfe. 

The Princess. By the same editor. 

Enoch Arden, and Other Poems. By the same editor. 

Idylls of the King. (2 vols.) By the same editor. 

In Memoriam. By the same editor. 

Published by the Charles E. Merrill Co., New York: 

Idylls of the King. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by W. D. Lewis. 

Enoch Arden. With Introduction and Notes by Dr. Albert F. Blaisdell. 

The Two Voices, etc. With Introduction and Notes by Prof. Hiram Corson of Cornell 
University. 

Elaine. 

In Memoriam. 

The Holy Grail. 

Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: 

Fifty Poems (1830-1864). Edited by J. H. Loblan. 

Early Poems. Edited, with Critical Introduction, Commentaries, Notes, Various Read- 
ings, Transcript of Poems Temporarily and Finally Suppressed and a Bibliography, by 
John Churton Collins. 

In Memoriam. Edited by A. W. Robinson. 

In Memoriam. With Introductions by Stopford A. Brooke and Elizabeth Luther Cary. 
Idylls of the King. With Introductions by the same authors. 

Published by D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York: 

Select Poems. Edited by A. M. MacMechan. 

Selections. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Arthur Beatty. 

Enoch Arden and Locksley Hall. Edited by C. S. Brown. 

The Princess. Edited by A. J. George. 

421 


APPENDIX 


Published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York: 

Select Tennyson for School, College and Private Study. Edited by J. L. Robertson. 
Gareth and Lynette; Launcelot and Elaine; and The Passing of Arthur. Edited by C. 
S. Hart. 

The Princess. Edited by George Edward Woodberry, 

Published by George H. Doran Co., New York: 

Poems for Children. 

The Children’ 8 Tennyson: Stories in Prose and Verse . 

Published by Lyons & Carnahan, Chicago: 

Idylls of the King. With Introduction and Notes by Margaret Booth. 

Published by Henry Holt & Co., New York: 

Selections from Idylls of the King. Edited by J. Erskine. 

The Princess. Edited by L. A. Sherman. 

Published by Frederick A. Stokes & Co., New York: 

Selected Poems. ( The Children’s Poets.) 

Published by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York: 

In Memoriam. Edited by C. Mansford. 

Maud and Other Poems. Edited by J. Gollancz. 

Published by John C. Nimmo, London: 

Poems for the Young: Tennyson. 

Published by Silver, Burdett & Co., Boston and New York: 

In Memoriam. Edited by V. P. Squires. 

Idylls of the King. ( Selections .) Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by James E. 
Thomas. 

The Holy Grail. Edited by Sophie Jewett. 

The Holy Grail. Edited by S. Swett. 

The Princess. Edited by J. Chalmers. 

Published by the Rand, McNally Co., Chicago and New York: 

Love-Songs from Tennyson. Selected and Arranged by Ethel Harris. 

Published by D. Appleton & Co., New York: 

Idylls of the King ; The Coming of Arthur ; Gareth and Lynette ; Launcelot and Elaine ; 
The Passing of Arthur. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by J. V. Denney. 

The Princess. Edited by F. T. Baker. 

Published by The American Book Co., New York: 

Idylls of the King. Selected and Edited by Henry van Dyke. 

Selections from the Idylls of the King. Edited by Mary F. Willard. 

The Princess. Edited by H. W. Shryock. 

The Princess. Edited by Katherine Lee Bates. 

Published by Harper Brothers, New York: 

Suppressed Poems. Compiled and Edited by J. C. Thomson. 

Published by G. W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia: 

Best Poems of Tennyson. 

Published by The John Lane Co., London and New York: 

Love Poems of Tennyson. Edited by Frederic Chapman. 

Published by the Page Co., Boston: 

Complete Poetical Works. Edited and Annotated by Dr. William J. Rolfe. 

Songs from Tennyson. 


422 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Published by the T. Y. Crowell Co., New York: 

Lover' 8 Tale and Other Poems. Edited by Eugene Parsons. 

Idylls of the King. Edited by Eugene Parsons. 

In Memoriam. Edited by Eugene Parsons. 

Published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York: 

In Memoriam. With a Commentary by L. Morel. 

Published by the Century Co., New York: 

In Memoriam. With an Introduction by Edmund Clarence Stedman. 

Published by the H. M. Caldwell Co., Boston and New York: 

In Memoriam. With an Introduction by Dr. Henry van Dyke. 

Published by Cassell & Co., London: 

Poems: a Selection. With Introduction by A. T. Quiller-Couch. 

Published by the John C. Winston Co., Chicago: 

Poems. With Introduction and Notes by Arthur Waugh. 

Published by B. H. Sanborn & Co., Boston: 

The Princess. Edited by L. W. Smith. 

Gareth and Lynette; Launcelot and Elaine; The Passing of Arthur. Edited, with In- 
troduction and Notes, by Katherine Lee Bates. 

Published by Scott, Foresman & Co., Chicago and New York: 

The Princess. Edited by Copeland. 

Published by Allyn & Bacon, Boston: 

Idylls of the King ; The Coming of Arthur ; Gareth and Lynette ; Launcelot and Elaine; 
The Passing of Arthur. With Introduction and Notes by H. Boynton. 

Published by Newson & Co., New York: 

Idylls of the King ; Gareth and Lynette and Other Idylls. With an Introduction and 
Notes by Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 

The Princess. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 

Published by the Educational Publishing Co., Chicago: 

Enoch Arden. With Introduction and Notes by M. A. Eaton. 

Published by the American School Supply Co., Los Angeles: 

Idylls of the King; Launcelot and Elaine. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by 
Louise Pound. 

Published by Blackie & Son, Glasgow: 

The Coming of Arthur and The Passing of Arthur. With Introduction and Notes by 
David Frew. 

Published by the St. Catherine Press, London: 

Songs and Ballads from Tennyson. 

Published by Grant Richards, London: 

Dream of Fair Women and Other Poems. Selected and Illustrated by Edmund J. Sul- 
livan. 

Published by Maclaren & Son, Glasgow: 

Selections from Tennyson. By William Landells. 

Published by Horace Marshall & Son, London: 

Selections from the Poetry of Tennyson. Edited by E. E. Speight. 

Published by H. J. Drane, London: 

Gems from Tennyson. Edited by J. R. Tutin. 

423 


APPENDIX 


Published by Thomas Nelson & Sons, London: 

The Gateway to Tennyson: Tales and Extracts from the Poet's Work. With an Intro- 
duction by Mrs. Andrew Lang. 

Published by O. Anaker, London: 

Womanhood: Selections from Tennyson. By Alice E. Rutley. 

Published by The University Tutorial Press, London: 

Enoch Arden. Edited by Frederick Allen. 

Published by the Walter Scott Publishing Co., London: 

Lyrics and Poems , with Maud and In Memoriam. Edited, with a Biographical Intro- 
duction, by Elizabeth A. Sharp. 

English Idylls: The Princess and Other Poems. Edited by Elizabeth A. Sharp. 
Published by Methuen & Co., London: 

The Princess; a Medley. With Notes and Introduction by Elizabeth Wordsworth. 
In Memoriam. With Analysis and Notes by H. C. Beeching. 

In Memoriam; The Princess, and Maud. Edited, with a Critical Introduction, Com- 
mentaries, Notes, Various Readings, etc., by John Churton Collins. 

Maud and Other Poems. With Notes and Introduction by Elizabeth Wordsworth. 

Published by William Heinemann, London: 

Early Poems. With Introduction by Arthur Waugh. 

English Idylls and Other Poems. With Introduction by the same author. 

Idylls of the King. With Introduction by the same author. 2 vols. 

In Memoriam. With Introduction by the same author. 

Maud and Other Poems. With Introduction by the same author. 

The Princess. With Introduction by the same author. 


THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF ALFRED 
TENNYSON: WITH DATES, TITLES, 
AND NUMBER OF PAGES 


1827. Poems bt Two Brothers. London: Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 
Stationers’-Hall-Court: and J. & J. Jackson, Louth, mdcccxxvii. Crown 8vo, 
pp. xii, 228. 

1829. Timbuctoo. A poem which obtained the chancellor’s medal at the Cambridge 
Commencement, mdcccxxix. By A. Tennyson, of Trinity College. (Printed in 
“ Prolusiones Academical: mdcccxxix. Cantabrigise: typis academicis excudit 
Joannes Smith.” pp. 41.) 

1830. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Effingham Wilson, 
Royal Exchange, Cornhill. 1830. 12mo, pp. 154, and leaf of errata. 

1832. Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. 
mdcccxxxiii. 12mo, pp. 163. 

1842. Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. In two volumes. London: Edward Moxon, Dover 
Street, mdcccxlii. 2 vols. 12mo, pp. vii, 233; vii, 231. 

1847. The Princess: A Medley. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 
Dover Street, mdcccxlvii. 12mo, pp. 164. 

1850. In Memoriam. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, mdcccl. 12mo, pp. 
vii, 210. 

1852. Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. By Alfred Tennyson, Poet 
Laureate. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. 1852. 8vo, pamphlet, pp. 16. 

1855. Maud, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. Lon- 
don: Edward Moxon. 1855. 12mo, pp. 154. 

424 


\ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


1859. Idylls op the King. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. London: 

Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street. 1859. 12mo, pp. 261. 

1864. Enoch Arden, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. London: 

Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street. 1864. 12mo, pp. 178. 

1869. The Holy Grail, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet 
Laureate. Strahan & Co., Publishers, 56, Ludgate Hill, London. 1870. 12mo, 

pp. 222. 

1872. Gareth and Lynette, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. 
Strahan & Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London. 1872. 12mo, pp. 136. 

1875. Queen Mary. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Henry S. King & 
Co. 1875. 12mo, pp. viii, 278. 

1876. Harold. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Henry S. King & Co. 1877. 
12mo, pp. viii, 161. 

1879. The Lover’s Tale. By Alfred Tennyson. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1 
Paternoster Square. 1879. 12mo, pp. 95. 

1880. Ballads, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London: C. Kegan Paul 
& Co., 1 Paternoster Square. 1880. 12mo, pp. vi, 184. 

1884. The Cup and the Falcon. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate. London: 

Macmillan & Co. 1884. 12mo, pp. 146. 

Becket. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate. London: Macmillan & 
Co. 1884. Crown 8vo, pp. 213. 

1885. Tiresias, and Other Poems. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. 

London: Macmillan & Co. 1885. 12mo, pp. viii, 204. 

1886. Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, etc. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, D. C. L., 

Poet Laureate. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1886. 12mo, pp. 201. 

1889. Demeter, and Other Poems. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, P. L., D. C. L. Lon- 
don and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1889. 12mo, pp. vi, 175. 

1892. The Foresters: Robin Hood and Maid Marian. By Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 

Poet Laureate. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1892. 12mo, pp. 155. 

The Death of (Enone; Akbar’s Dream, and Other Poems. By Alfred, Lord 
Tennyson, Poet Laureate. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1892. 12mo, 

pp. vi, 113. 

1893. Poems by Two Brothers. “Here nos novimus esse nihil.” — Martial. New York 
and London: Macmillan & Co. 1893. pp. xx, 251. (Preface by Hallam, Lord Ten- 
nyson.) 

1905. In Memoriam. With notes by Hallam, Lord Tennyson. Macmillan & Co. 


A PARTIAL LIST OF TRANSLATIONS 
OF TENNYSON’S WORKS 

LATIN AND GREEK 

In Memoriam, translated into Latin elegiac verse by Oswald A. Smith; for private circu- 
lation only. Noticed in Edinburgh Review, April, 1866. 

Enoch Arden, translated into Latin by Gulielmus Selwyn. Lond. Edv. Moxon et Soc. 
a. d. mdccclxvii. 

Horce Tennysoniance, sive Eclogre e Tennysono, Latine Redditse. Cura A. J. Church. 

Lond. et Cantab. Macmillan et Soc. mdccclxx. pp. viii, 139. 

Crossing the Bar, and a Few Other Translations. By H. M. B. (Not published.) 1890. 
Cambridge, printed by C. J. Clay, M.A., & Sons, at the University Press, pp. 67. (By 
Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Twelve Latin translations and 
seven Greek translations of “Crossing the Bar,” in various metres.) 

Verses and Translations by C. S. C. 1862. (C. S. Calverley.) Contains a Latin version 
of Section 106 of In Memoriam. 


425 


APPENDIX 


GERMAN 

Gedichte: Ubers. von W. Hertzberg. Dessau, 18.53. pp. viii, 369. 

In Memoriam: aus dem Engl, nach der 5^“ Auflage. Braunschweig, 1854. 
Konigs-Idyllen: Ubers. von H. A. Feldmann. 2 te Aufl. Hamburg, 1872. pp. viii, 277. 
Kdnig8-Idyllen: libers, von W. Scholz. Berlin, 1867. pp. 223. 

Enoch Arden: Ubers. von Schellwien. Quedlinburg, 1867. pp. 47. 

Enoch Arden: Ubers. von Robert WaldmUller. (Ed. Duboc.) 2 te -4 te Aufl. Hamburg, 
1868-1870. pp. 42. 33^ Aufl. Hamburg, 1890. 

Aylmers Feld: Ubers. von F. W. Weber. Leipzig, 1869. 

Enoch Arden: Ubers. von F. W. Weber. Leipzig, 1869. pp. 42. 

Aylmers Feld: Ubers. von H. A. Feldmann. Hamburg, 1870. pp. 44. 

Enoch Arden: Ubers. von H. A. Feldmann. Hamburg, 1870. pp. 45. 

Ausgewahlte Dichtungen: Ubers. von H. A. Feldmann. Hamburg, 1870. pp. 89. 
Freundes-Klage, nach “In Memoriam:” frei Ubertr. von Robert WaldmUller. Hamburg, 
1870. pp. 160. 

Ausgewahlte Gedichte: Ubers. von M. Rugard. Elbing, 1872. pp. v, 126. 

In Memoriam — “ Zum Geddchtniss Ubers. von Agnes von Bohlen. Berlin, 1874. pp. 
184. 

Harold, ein Drama: deutsch von Alb. Graf Wickenburg. Hamburg," 1879-1880. pp. 
iv, 137. 

Enoch Arden: deutsch von A. Strodtmann. Berlin, 1876. 2 te verbess. Auflage, 1881. 
pp. 71. 

Enoch Arden: deutsch von Carl Eichholz. 2 te Auflage. Hamburg, 1881. pp. 56. 
Kdnig8-Idyllen: Im Metrum des Orig. Ubers. von Carl Weiser. Universal Bibliothek, 
nrs. 1817, 1818. Leipzig, 1883-1886. pp. 175. 

Enoch Arden: Students Tauchnitz Aufl. mit Worterbuch, bearb. von Dr. A. Hamann. 
Leipzig, 1886. pp. 24. 

(Bibliothek der Gesammt-Literatur.) 

Ausgewahlte Dichtungen: Ubers. von A. Strodtmann. Hildburghausen, 1867. Leipzig, 
1887-1890. Meyer’s VolksbUcher, nrs. 371-373. pp. 164. 

Enoch Arden: frei bearb. fUr die Jugend. Hausbibliothek. Leipzig, 1888. pp. 29. 
Locksley Hall: aus dem Engl, von Ferd. Freiligrath. Locksley Hall sechzig Jahre spdter: 

Ubers. von Jakob Fels. Hamburg, 1888. pp. 59. 

Locksley Hall sechzig Jahre spdter: Ubers. von Karl B. Esmarch. Gotha, 1888. pp. 32. 
Enoch Arden: aus dem Engl, von Griebenow. Halle, 1889. pp. 35. 

Maud: Ubers. von F. W. Weber. S te Auflage. Paderborn, 1891. pp. 109. 

Enoch, Arden: Ubers. von Max Mendheim. Leipzig: W. Fiedler, 1896. 

In Memoriam: aus dem Engl, von Jakob Fels. Strassburg: J. H. E. Heitz, 1899. 

Enoch Arden: deutsch von Walter Prausnitz. Halle: H. Gesenius, 1901. 

Ausgewahlte Dramatische Werke: in Deutscher Nachbildung, u. m. e. Geleitwort, von 
Johannes Friedmann. Berlin: Thormann und Goetsch, 1905. 

DUTCH 

De molenaars-dochter : Vrij bewerkt door A. J. de Bull. Utrecht, 1859. 

Henoch Arden: Naar het Engl, door S. J. van den Bergh. ’s Hage, 1869. 

Henoch Arden: door J. L. Wertheim. Amsterdam, 1882. 

Vier Idyllen van Koning Arthur: Amsterdam, 1883. 

De Koning 8-Idyllen: metrisch vert, door J. H. F. Le Comte. Rotterdam: Nijgh & van 
Ditmar, 1893. 

Idyllen van den Koning: erste volledige Nederlandsche uitgave, met inleiding en aan- 
teekeningen door Soera Rana. Amsterdam: P. N. van Kampen & Zoon, 1896. 

Henoch Arden: door Soera Rana. Haarlem: De Erven Loosjes, 1897. 


426 




BIBLIOGRAPHY 


ITALIAN 

Dora: Traduzione di Giacomo Zanella: in Verst di Giacomo Zanella, vol. i. Firenze, 
1868, G. Barbera. pp. 350-359. 

(Another translation of the same poem by the same author appeared in Varie Versions 
Poetiche di Giacomo Zanella. Firenze, 1887. Successori Le Monnier. pp. 215-223.) 
La Cena d Oro di Alfredo Tennyson: Trad, di Lodovico Biagi. In Firenze. Coi Tipi di 
M. Cellini e C. 1871. pp. 22. 

Appendice di Alcune Poesie Varie. pp. 23-30. (II Premio della VirtO. Un Isoletta. 
La Ciocca dei Capelli. II Fiore.) 

Dora: Traduzione in versi di Giuseppe Chiarini. Poesie, Storie, Canti, Traduzioni. Li- 
vorno, 1874. F. Vigo. pp. 407-418. 

“ The May Queen:" Traduzione dei Marchesi Luigi e Raniero de Calboli. Roma, 1875. 
Idilli, Liriche, Miti, e Legende, Enoc Arden, Quadri Dramatici: Traduzioni di Carlo Fac- 
cioli (Verona). [1st Ed. 1876, 2d Ed. 1879.] 3d. Ed. 1887. Firenze, Successori Le Mon- 
nier. pp. xii, 441. 

Enoch Arden di Alfredo Tennyson: Recato in Versi Italiani di Angelo Saggioni. Padova, 
1876. Stabilimento Prosperini. pp. 51. Nozze Scopoli-N accari.* 

(This translation was reprinted in Letture di Famiglia. Firenze, 1885. pp. 109.) 

II Primo Divorbio (Nell’ Isola di Wight): Trad, di Enrico Castelnuovo. Venezia, 1886. 

Stab. Tipografico Fratelli Visentini. pp. 19. Nozze Bordica-Selvatico. 

La Prima Lite: Estratto dal Giornale “La Battaglia Bizantina”: Traduzione di P. T. 

Pavolini. Bologna, 1888. Soc. Tip. Azzoguidi. pp. 12. 

La Carica della Brigata Lyght. Le Due Sorelle. In Fiori del Nord: Versione di Moderne 
Poesie Tedesche e Inglese di Pietro Turati. Milano, 1881. Natale-Batteazatti. pp. 
133-137. 

Lyrical Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate: with copious prefatory and ex- 
planatory notes for the use of Italians by Theophilus C. Cann. Florence, 1887. F. 
Paggi. pp. 31-68. ( Loclcsley Hall, Lady Clare, Lady Clara Vere de V ere, St. Agnes' Eve.) 
Le XJltime Poesie: Tradotte in versi Italiani da Paolo Bellaza. Milano: Cogliati, 1893. 
pp. vi, 86. 

II Viaggio di Maeldune, da una Legenda Irlandese del 700: Traduzione di Enrico Castel- 
nuovo. Venezia: Visentini, 1895. pp. 14. 

Morte di Arturo: Versione di Em. Teza. Padova: Randi. 1899. pp. 7-xxi. 

La Morte di Arturo : Traduzione poetica in armeno antico di Arxenio Ghazikeca. Venezia: 
t. s. Lazzaro, 1900. pp. 14. 

In Memoriam: Collana di poesie, recate in versi da Saladino Saladini Pilastri, sonetti 
al padre ed altri versi. Cesena: Vignuzzi, 1901. pp. xxx-323. 

Due Poemati: Tradotti da Carlo Sormani. Milano: Martinelli, 1902. pp. 115. 
Tiresia: Traduzione di Em. Teza. Padova: Gallina, 1905. pp. 43. 

Ulisse: Traduzione di Em. Teza. Padova: Randi, 1907. pp. 16. 

Enone: Poemetto tradotto da Em. Teza. Padova: Randi, 1908. pp. 21. 

Italian translations, in verse and prose, from Tennyson’s poems are to be found in the 
following articles: — 

“Poeti Stranieri Moderni — Alfredo Tennyson:” di Eugenio Camerini. Nella Nuova 
Antologia. Firenze, Febbraio, 1870. Vol. xiii. pp. 229-249. Frammenti di traduzione 
in prosa. 

“Alfredo Tennyson e le sue nuove poesie.” (Ballads and other Poems, 1881.) Articolo 

* It is an Italian custom at a wedding to have some little book printed, containing an 
original poem, a new translation, or something of literary novelty and appropriateness, 
to be presented to the bride and groom and their friends as a memorial of the marriage. 
The note indicates that Signore Saggioni had his translation of Enoch Arden printed as 
a gift for the wedding of his friends of the families of Scopoli and Naccari. 

427 


APPENDIX 


critico di Enrico Nencioni, nel Fanfulla della Domenica, Roma, 10 Aprile, 1881* 
Traduzione in prosa della poesia Rizpah. 

“Maud.” Articolo critico di Enrico Nencioni nella Domenico Letteraria. Roma, 19 Marzo, 
1882. Frammenti di traduzione in prosa. 

“Gli ldilli del Re.” Art. crit. di Enrico Nencioni, nel Fanfulla della Domenica, Roma, 
9 Settembre, 1883. Traduzione in prosa di un frammento della Ginevra. 

“Lord Tennyson: Alcuni suoi scritti minori.” Art. crit. di F. Rodriguez, nella Nuova 
Antologia, Roma, 16 Luglio, 1890, Serie III, vol. xxviii, pp. 318-340. Traduzioni in 
versi dell’ idillio II Ruscello, della ballata Rizpah, e La Diga Estrema. 

FRENCH 

Elaine, Genilvre, Viviane, Enide. Trad, par Francisque Michel. 111. par Gustave Dor6. 

Paris. Hachette et Cie. 1867-1869. 

Enoch Arden. Trad, par M. de la Rive. 1870. 

* Enoch Arden. Trad, par X. Marmier. 1887. 
ldylles et Poemes: Enoch Arden: Locksley Hall. Trad, par A. Buisson du Berger. 1888. 
Enoch Arden. Trad, par M. l’Abb6 R. Courtois. 1890. 

Enoch Arden. Trad, par E. Duglin. 1890. 

Maud. Preface et traduction de Henri Fauvel. Lemerre. 1892. 

Enoch Arden ( poeme ). Traduit en prose frangaise par Al. Beljame. Paris: Hachette 
et Cie. 1892. 

In Memoriam {poemes). Traduits en vers frangais par Leon Morel. Paris: Hachette 
et Cie. 1898. 

Poemes Divers d’ Alfred Tennyson. Traduits en vers frangais par L6on Morel. Paris: 
Hachette et Cie. 1899. 

SWEDISH 

Konung Arthur och hans Riddare: Upsala, 1876. 

Elaine: A. Hjelmstjerna. 1877. 

NORWEGIAN AND DANISH 
Enoch Arden: oversat af A. Munch. Copenhagen. 1866. 

“ The May Queen:” oversat af A. Falck. Christiania. 1875. (1855?) 

Idyller om Kong Arthur: oversat af A. Munch. Copenhagen. 1876. 

Anna og Locksley Slot: oversat af A. Hansen. 1872. 

“ Sea Dreams :” “ Aylmer’s Field:” oversat af F. L. Mynster. 1877. 

SPANISH 

Enid and Elaine: translated by Lope Gisbert. 1875. 

Poemes de Alfredo Tennyson: Enoch Arden, Gareth y Lynette, Merlin y Bibiana, etc. Tr. 
by D. Vicente de Arana. Barcelona. 1883. 

Note. — The difficulty of making this list perfect in the present state of bibliography 
is immense. It is only in the German and the Italian that it approaches completeness 
and accuracy. 


428 

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